Overview
Cybersecurity Report: Strengthening AWS Cloud Security for wrkman
In the era of cloud-driven applications, ensuring robust cybersecurity is not just a regulatory requirement but a business imperative. wrkman, a technology-driven organization, hosts its mission-critical applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company runs a Laravel-based application backed by a scalable AWS infrastructure. This report highlights the current security posture, risks, and recommended best practices to strengthen resilience against evolving cyber threats.
Current AWS Infrastructure
The client’s AWS environment consists of the following core services:
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): Used for user, role, and policy management.
- Amazon S3: Stores static assets and application data backups.
- Amazon EC2 (4 Instances): Hosts the Laravel application backend.
- Amazon RDS (MySQL): Primary relational database for application data.
- Application Load Balancer (ALB): Distributes traffic across EC2 instances.
- Amazon ElastiCache (Redis): Provides caching and session management.
- Amazon Simple Email Service (SES): Handles transactional and marketing emails.
Cybersecurity Threat Landscape
As wrkman scales its operations, it faces common cloud-native risks such as:
- Identity & Access Risks: Over-permissive IAM roles, lack of MFA, insider threats.
- Data Risks: Unencrypted S3 buckets, database exposure, accidental data leaks.
- Network Risks: Unrestricted security group rules, DDoS attacks on ALB.
- Application Risks: Laravel framework vulnerabilities, SQL injection, XSS.
- Operational Risks: Insufficient logging, delayed patching, weak incident response.
Security Analysis
🔐 Identity & Access Management
🗄️ Data Security
🖥️ Compute (EC2 & Laravel)
🌐 Network & Application (ALB, SES)
📊 Monitoring & Logging
Recommended AWS Security Enhancements
- Enforce MFA across all IAM users.
- Use IAM Access Analyzer to remove unused permissions.
- Rotate access keys regularly.
- Enable encryption at rest & in transit for RDS and ElastiCache.
- Apply bucket policies with least-privilege access to S3.
- Regularly audit S3 with Amazon Macie for sensitive data.
- Deploy AWS WAF with managed rules for ALB.
- Enable AWS Shield Advanced for DDoS protection.
- Automate Laravel dependency scanning using CI/CD pipelines.
- Enable Amazon GuardDuty for continuous threat intelligence.
- Use AWS Security Hub to centralize compliance and vulnerability checks.
- Forward logs to a secure, immutable S3 bucket with AWS Lake Formation.
- Automate remediation (e.g., auto-removal of public S3 buckets) using AWS Lambda.
- Implement disaster recovery strategy with RDS snapshots and cross-region replication.
- Conduct quarterly penetration testing and red-team exercises.
Compliance & Governance Alignment
The proposed security improvements help wrkman align with industry frameworks:
– PCI-DSS: Secure payment data handling.
– GDPR: Strong data protection and privacy controls.
– ISO 27001: Continuous risk management and governance.
Governance to Resolution – Prioritization for wrkman
Critical (1–2 months)
IAM Governance:
– Enforce MFA for all IAM users.
– Remove unused IAM users and keys.
– Apply least-privilege roles using IAM Access Analyzer.
Data Protection:
– Enable encryption at rest & in transit for S3, RDS, and Redis.
– Apply S3 bucket policies to prevent public access.
Network Security:
– Restrict Security Groups to least access.
– Deploy AWS WAF managed rules on ALB to block common attacks.
Medium (3–6 months)
Monitoring & Threat Detection:
– Enable Amazon GuardDuty for anomaly detection.
– Centralize security compliance via AWS Security Hub.
– Archive CloudTrail logs securely with lifecycle policies.
Application Security:
– Integrate automated Laravel vulnerability scans in CI/CD.
– Apply regular patching cadence for EC2 instances.
Long-Term (6–12 months)
Operational Governance:
– Automate remediation with AWS Lambda (e.g., for public S3 buckets).
– Establish quarterly penetration testing and red-team exercises.
– Implement disaster recovery & cross-region replication for RDS.
Compliance & Governance Frameworks:
– Formalize alignment with ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, GDPR.
– Set up governance dashboards for continuous audit readiness.
Conclusion
By adopting AWS-native cybersecurity solutions, wrkman can achieve a defense-in-depth strategy. Strengthening IAM, encrypting data, enabling WAF/GuardDuty, and automating response mechanisms will ensure that the Laravel application and its underlying infrastructure remain resilient, compliant, and trusted by end-users.
