The complexity and pace of cloud environments result in constant changes that are difficult to monitor and secure. Security teams are inundated with alerts, each requiring thorough investigation to determine if it represents a real threat. This constant vigilance can lead to resource overload, missed threats, and delayed responses. Here’s why CDR is indispensable:

In this article, we will introduce one of the most useful tools that every engineer responsible for the network layer should have in their arsenal: VPC flow logs. Back in the day when private data centers were cool, when we needed to troubleshoot network problems, we had to “tap the wire” and that could take many forms such as installing packet sniffers on various network segments or configuring complicated traffic mirroring options. Enter VPC flow logs! With the cloud and the advent of software defined networks, troubleshooting IP networks has never been easier.

AWS Config offers basic capabilities for change management in small AWS environments but has limitations when it comes to complex and dynamic environments. You can consider Stream Security as a more capable, scalable and cost-effective alternative to AWS Config. Stream Security saves your teams cycles with effective root-cause & impact analysis, prioritized & customizable rules and real-time capabilities with runtime events. You can gain these benefits in a predictable and cost-effective way.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that uses machine learning and other techniques to identify malicious activity and unauthorized behavior in your AWS accounts and workloads. It integrates with other AWS security services to provide a comprehensive view of your security posture and helps Security, DevOps, Compliance and Incident response teams to quickly respond to security threats.

The Security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework is focused on ensuring that workloads are designed, deployed, and managed in a secure manner. It includes implementing security best practices, such as protecting data confidentiality, integrity, and availability, managing user access and privileges, and implementing network and application-level security controls.

As businesses increasingly migrate their applications and infrastructure to the cloud, ensuring resiliency becomes paramount to maintain service availability and minimize disruptions. Resilient cloud architectures are designed to withstand failures and recover quickly from disruptions, offering enhanced reliability and performance. This article provides an overview of resiliency patterns and trade-offs that can help architects build efficient and robust cloud solutions.

In today's cloud computing landscape, cost optimization plays a crucial role in maximizing the value of your infrastructure. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a range of services to help users achieve cost efficiency, and one such option is leveraging Graviton processors for Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service). You can save up to 10% in RDS compute costs by switching from x86 to Graviton processors. We cover the advantages and things to consider on this post, and how Stream.Security can help determine where you can make this switch.

The Sustainability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework focuses on integrating sustainability considerations into the design, development, and operation of cloud workloads. This includes reducing the environmental impact of IT operations, promoting sustainable practices, and providing tools and resources to measure and report on sustainability performance.

‍The Cost Optimization pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework provides guidance on how to design and operate workloads in the cloud to optimize costs. It helps organizations identify opportunities to reduce costs, eliminate waste, and improve efficiency without sacrificing performance, security, or functionality. The Cost Optimization pillar is focused on helping organizations achieve maximum business value by minimizing costs and maximizing returns on cloud investments.

The Performance Efficiency of the AWS Well-Architected Framework is focused on optimizing the use of computing resources to meet performance requirements and efficiently deliver business value. This includes understanding workload requirements, selecting appropriate resource types, and monitoring performance to identify opportunities for optimization and cost savings.

‍The Reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework focuses on designing and operating reliable and resilient systems in the cloud. It involves building systems that can automatically recover from failures, scale to meet changing demands and maintain availability in the face of disruptions. The Reliability pillar also emphasizes the importance of testing, monitoring, and continuously improving systems to ensure they meet the needs of the organization.

IAM roles for service accounts provide a secure and efficient way to manage access to cloud resources in a cloud environment. By assigning roles to service accounts instead of individual users, organizations can improve their security posture by minimizing the risk of human error or credential misuse.

IAM plays a crucial role in securing access to resources in an AWS EKS cluster, therefor it’s important to have a strong understanding of IAM (Identity and Access Management) to effectively troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Service Control Policies (SCPs) in AWS offer a robust mechanism for preserving security standards, which is essential for compliance and averting security breaches.

When deploying workloads to EKS, it is important to ensure that appropriate access control is in place to protect resources and data. This is where IAM roles and policies come into play. IAM roles and policies in Amazon EKS are used to define and manage permissions for Kubernetes resources running in an EKS cluster. IAM roles are used to grant access to AWS resources and services, while Kubernetes policies are used to grant access to Kubernetes resources.

The Cluster Autoscaler in Kubernetes is a component that dynamically resizes the cluster according to the workload. In Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), the Cluster Autoscaler optimizes resource utilization and cost by scaling down nodes during periods of low demand and scaling up when demand increases.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a high-performance block storage service that allows you to attach persistent storage volumes to your Amazon EC2 instances. While EBS provides a wide range of benefits, it can be a significant contributor to your AWS costs if not managed efficiently. This article outlines some best practices to optimize EBS costs without compromising on performance or reliability.