Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2022)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K74-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1035-9

A Survey on AWS Cloud Computing Security

Challenges & Solutions
Shilpi Mishra
2022 6th International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS) | 978-1-6654-1035-9/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICICCS53718.2022.9788254

Dr. Manish Kumar

Department of CSE
Department of CSE
Arya College of Engineering and Research Centre,
Arya Institute of Engineering & Technology,
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
[email protected]
[email protected]

Niharika Singh Stuti Dwivedi

Department of CSE Department of CSE
Arya College of Engineering and Research Centre, Arya College of Engineering and Research Centre,
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract: Amazon offers a comprehensive range of IT (AWS) self-service, customers may take control of their
solutions to let businesses construct their private virtual clouds internal processes while still being ready to respond to
and maintain total control over their infrastructure. It is external requests as they arise.
possible to use Amazon Web Services for both businesses and
IT projects. Security professionals are drawn to the cloud 'AWS' stands for Amazon Web Services, which is a
because of its cost savings and efficiency, but it also poses set of online cloud computing [1] services provided via the
numerous security and compliance issues. EC2 instances, internet by Amazon's website. Amazon S3 and Amazon
which claim to make cloud computing safe for highly regulated EC2 are two of the most often utilized services here.
companies, have been introduced as part of Amazon Web According to the service's pitch, it is easier, cheaper, and
Services' (AWS) effort to relieve business security and quicker than setting up a physical [2-3] server farm to
compliance issues with cloud computing. Cloud computing has provide enormous amounts of processing power.
its drawbacks; however, these drawbacks also provide an
opportunity to study a variety of cloud computing-related There are numerous Availability Zones [4] in each region,
topics. The security and privacy of data stored and processed each of which is a separate data center where AWS services
on cloud service providers' servers is a major concern. Several are offered. To avoid the spread of outages across Zones and
studies on cloud computing security and privacy are reviewed availability Zones, they have been segregated. It's possible
in this study. A better knowledge of cloud computing's security to set certain services (e.g. Dynamo DB, S3) to be replicated
problems has been shown and the techniques and solutions across Availability Zones to prevent service outages.
which have been used by the cloud service sector have been
highlighted in this article. The objective of this report is to shed
light on immerging cloud services market and the different
upcoming challenges like network issues.

Keywords: Amazon Web Services, Cloud Computing;

Storage Security; Cloud Storage; Data Privacy; Cloud
Security.

I. INTRODUCTION
AWS (Amazon Web Services) provides a highly
available and reliable cloud computing platform with
scalability, allowing users to create a broad variety of
applications. AWS places a high priority on ensuring the
security, integrity, and availability of its customers' systems
and data. Maintaining customer trust and confidence is also
a priority.
Companies may utilize AWS to develop cost-effectively
applications and services that are flexible, scalable, and
reliable by providing computational power, storage, content Fig. 1: Architecture of AWS. Source: AWS Tutorial For Beginners
delivery, and other features. With Amazon Web Services & Experts: Learn In 3 Days - ACTE

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K74-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1035-9

II. SERVICES OF AWS provides an easy approach to incorporating alerts without

Templates from Amazon services such as VPC, EC2, having to worry about the specifics of multiple SMS and
Elastic Beanstalk, and others may be included in the email systems and gateways.
creation of a cloud with a single click using the cloud SQS - In certain cases, separate applications (or
formation feature. An application and IT infrastructure can application components) need to communicate with one
be replicated with a few clicks. other. A message queuing system is a great approach to do
To accommodate enormous simultaneous demand, a this.
user may employ a content delivery platform like video and S3 - The Simple Storage Service you might think of this
music to distribute extensively consumed digital products as your Drop-Box or other Internet storage service. Your
through Cloud Front. company's security rules will be satisfied with this method
You may gather, evaluate, and analyze metrics linked to of storing sensitive data.
cloud resources using Cloud Watch. As your virtual It's fairly uncommon for highly distributed systems[7] to
infrastructure becomes more complex, it is quite beneficial. break down enormous issues into smaller, more manageable
Known as "NOSQL" systems because they don't utilize chunks of labor, known as "tasks." Schedule, manage and
SQL as their primary query language, a new class of set up tasks relevant to your huge distributed process using
database systems has arisen in the last few years. Large data SWF service application components.
sets that can grow horizontally without any human To use Amazon's Storage Gateway service, you'll need a
involvement are quite popular. PC and an Internet connection, as well as a physical device
It is possible to create the backbone of a virtual network in your infrastructure. Using it for disaster recovery and
using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). backup archiving is a no-brainer.

There are occasions when a developer has to temporarily Amazon EC2's Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) enables you
store a big quantity of data without committing it to a to create a private network of Amazon EC2 server instances.
database. In applications with a large number of
transactions, this is a common occurrence. The Elastic cache
service[5] from Amazon is ideal for storing massive, yet
transitory, data sets in in-memory storage.
Elastic Beanstalk [6] is a programming framework that
may be used to manage all of the numerous services that are
required.
To slice and dice the different data sets one has saved in
any of the Amazon data storage services, one may use
Amazon Elastic Map Reduce (EMR).
A framework for managing users who will have access
to your Amazon services, IAM (Identity and Access
Management) is provided by Amazon. For instance, if you
wish to provide one user administrative access to Dynamo
DB data and another user access to an EC2[6] server
instance, you'll need to set up both of those instances using
Fig. 2: Different AWS services. Source: Amazoncloudlinux.com
EC2.
If you aren't quite ready to embark on the NoSQL III. GENERAL SECURITY MEASURES
bandwagon, the Amazon RDS should feel at home. SQL AWS incorporates security into its services in line with
query language and tools are used to build a scalable industry standards and provides documentation on how to
database system, which should be known to any database make use of the security tools. When creating an application
administrator. environment, customers should make use of AWS security
This is Amazon's scalable DNS system, Route 53. capabilities and best practices. AWS places a high priority
Instead of utilizing your domain registrar's tools to create on protecting the privacy, integrity, and availability of its
DNS names[7] for computers, you must use Route 53 to customers' data, as well as retaining their trust and
keep track of your DNS zones and subzones. confidence. Following are some of AWS's methods for
protecting the cloud infrastructure:
This service, Simple Email Service (SES), is ideal if you
anticipate sending a large number of emails. It's far easier to A. Credentials and Certifications
utilize this service than to set up your outgoing email Amazon Web Services (AWS) has successfully passed
servers. numerous SAS70 Type II assessments and currently releases
Administrators and developers may use SNS to send out a Service Organization Controls 1 (SOC 1) report, which is
SMS and email notifications. The Amazon cloud[8] issued under both SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402. Along with its

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K74-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1035-9

ISO 27001 accreditation, AWS has been verified by the TABLE 1: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF AWS[ 21]
Payment Card Industry (PCI) as a Level 1 service provider Advantages Disadvantages
for data security (DSS). Regarding public sector
certifications, AWS has been granted FISMA Moderate User-friendly Lack of Experts
permission by US GSA and has been designated as the
platform for applications with ATOs under DIACAP. Scalable and Elastic Price Variations

B. Physical Security Cost-effective General issues

For many years, Amazon has designed and built large- Secure Limitations
scale data centers. The AWS infrastructure is housed in data
centers owned and operated by Amazon across the globe. It
is only individuals inside Amazon who have a valid A. Protect Transit Data
business need to know the location of Amazon's data centers Encrypt the server instance if the data is secret or
who are given this information. To prevent illegal entry, the critical. VeriSign or Entrust are examples of third-party
data centers are physically guarded by several methods. certification authorities that must be used. To encrypt data in
C. Secure Services both routes, the shared session key generated from the
server's public key is used to verify its authenticity to the
Services that are safe and reliable. The AWS cloud is browser. Businesses should use network security protocols
designed to be safe at every level. Unauthorized access or such as gateways and network management to safeguard
use is prevented while still providing clients with the degree data in transit. These will aid in the protection of networks
of freedom they expect. used to transfer data against virus assaults or intrusions.
D. Data Privacy Avoid using reactive security to safeguard your data. Rather
than that, discover at-risk information and take proactive
In today's world, the security of the data is very needed efforts to safeguard it. It is critical for businesses to
for those different techniques. Encryption and hiding are incorporate information security measures in their cyber
used [9-12]. Personal and commercial data may be security choices, which notify users or encrypt sensitive
encrypted [13-14] in the AWS cloud and backup and data. The business should establish procedures for
redundancy processes for services can be published so that categorizing and evaluating all data, regardless of its
clients can secure their data and keep their applications location. Policies are required to guarantee that proper
operational. safeguards are in place both during the data's storage and
during its access.
IV. INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY OF AWS
As a result of shifting IT infrastructure to Amazon Web B. Protect Data Stored
Services (AWS), a new paradigm of shared accountability Individual files should be encrypted before being
emerges between the two parties. Amazon Web Services uploaded to the cloud if users are worried about sensitive or
(AWS) may decrease the operational load by managing and confidential data being stored there. For example, before
controlling all aspects of a service's infrastructure, from its saving the data as Amazon S3 objects, it may be encrypted
host operating system and virtualization layer to its physical using any open source or commercial PGP-based tools, and
security. Additionally, users are in charge of maintaining it can be decrypted after download. Building HIPAA-
and configuring the AWS-provided security group firewall, Compatible Applications 20, which must hold Protected
as well as the guest OS system (with any necessary updates Health Information, typically necessitates this approach
and security patches). If you're concerned about security (PHI). File encryption on Amazon EC2 is dependent on the
and/or compliance, you may employ technologies like host- operating system being used. Encrypting data while it's in
based firewalls, intrusion detection, or encryption to help. transit or at rest is a difficult task no matter what operating
V. BEST SECURITY PRACTICES system or technology a user uses. For example, if a user
loses their password, they'll lose all of their data
Everyone is worried about safety in a multi-tenant setting. permanently. As a result, it is essential that you thoroughly
Every layer of the cloud application architecture should be research the key management capabilities of any goods you
protected by security measures. The service provider, of are considering purchasing.
course, takes care of physical security, which is still another
advantage of utilizing the cloud. The user must ensure C. Protect Credentials of AWS
network and application-level security. Securing cloud Access keys and X.509 certificates are two different
applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is addressed forms of security credentials provided by Amazon Web
in detail in this section. Basic security should be Services (AWS). Access key ID and secret access key are
implemented first using the tools and features listed above, two elements of the AWS access key. To authenticate a
and then further best practices should be implemented using request made over the REST or Query APIs, the user must
conventional ways. use his or her secret access key to compute a signature.
Sending queries via HTTPS protects against in-flight
tampering.

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K74-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1035-9

D. Manage Multiple Users [7] Amazon web services: Overview of security processes.
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Text and Image Security Using Combination of DCT
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