The Center for Internet Security (CIS) AWS Foundations Benchmark is the definitive guide for securing core services in the AWS Cloud. From IAM roles to VPC routing rules, complying with CIS guidelines is crucial for establishing baseline security. In this guide, we review how to audit and automate these checks continuously.
Key Sections of the CIS AWS Benchmark
The benchmark is divided into five core categories that cloud security teams must continuously audit:
- 1. Identity and Access Management (IAM): Ensuring MFA is enabled for all console users, credentials rotate every 90 days, and no wildcard administrative access exists.
- 2. Storage and Databases: Ensuring encryption is active at rest for EBS volumes and S3 buckets, and blocking all public S3 read policies.
- 3. Logging and Monitoring: Validating that CloudTrail is active across all regions, log files are encrypted with KMS keys, and metric filters track security group modifications.
- 4. Networking: Restricting SSH ingress on VPC security groups, and isolating databases into private subnets lacking internet gateway routes.
The Compliance Automation Gap
Many organizations attempt to audit these controls manually or via weekly snapshot reports. However, configurations drift in seconds when developers deploy new features, creating temporary windows of non-compliance.
Continuous Mathematical Attestation
PosturaNet solves compliance drift by translating CIS rules into logic statements. Our verification compiler continuously parses your Terraform plans and proves compliance status before code hits production. This guarantees that your live environment remains 100% compliant with CIS benchmarks at all times.