In the wave of digital transformation, enterprises’ cloud-based business systems are facing an increasing number of cyber threats. Once the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data are compromised, it may, at the very least, affect business continuity, and at worst, cause irreparable economic losses and damage to brand reputation. Therefore, finding a set of efficient, automated and easy-to-deploy security detection tools has become one of the top priorities for many enterprises after moving to the cloud.

In AWS’s security service matrix, Amazon Inspector is an automated tool specifically designed for vulnerability scanning and security assessment of Amazon EC2 instances. It can help enterprises identify and fix potential security issues in a timely manner before threats occur, thereby reducing the attack surface and enhancing overall security. As an AWS agent, Adcros will combine practical experience to take you to deeply understand the working principle, advantages, deployment methods of Amazon Inspector Classic, and how to maximize its value through reasonable configuration.

 

What is Amazon Inspector?

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service provided by AWS, capable of conducting systematic vulnerability scanning and configuration checks for Amazon EC2 instances. It will analyze the network reachability of the instance, security configuration, and whether there are known vulnerabilities, and organize the detection results into actionable security suggestions.

In the Inspector workflow, the system matches and analyzes instances based on a series of preset security rules, and classifies the results into three severity levels: High, Medium, and Low. Each security discovery not only points out the problem itself but also provides detailed repair suggestions, helping the operation and maintenance team respond quickly.

Currently, Amazon Inspector mainly covers the EC2 environment and is particularly suitable for:

  • Enterprise servers for hosting production applications
  • Compliance scenarios that require regular security audits
  • DevOps teams that hope to get involved in security detection in advance during the development stage

 

The core advantage of Amazon Inspector

As a security assessment tool for the AWS cloud environment, Amazon Inspector has the following significant advantages

1. Automation and easy integration

It can be quickly deployed to the target EC2 instance through simple configuration and supports integration with other AWS services (such as AWS Systems Manager, Security Hub) to achieve automated triggering of security checks and centralized management of results. Whether it is continuous detection during the application development stage or regular audits in the production environment, it can be seamlessly adapted.

2. Deep detection of EC2 instances

Inspector not only examines the exposed surface at the network level, but also delves into the operating system and application configuration layer of the instance to analyze whether there are issues such as improper configuration, weak passwords, and unpatched software versions.

3. Proactively identify and fix vulnerabilities

With its built-in best practice rule library and vulnerability intelligence, Inspector can issue warnings before vulnerabilities affect business operations, allowing operations and security teams to intervene and fix them immediately, thereby reducing security risks.

4. The rule base has extensive coverage

Inspector’s evaluation rules are maintained by AWS security experts, including industry standards (such as CIS Benchmark), AWS specific security best practices, and known vulnerabilities (Cves), etc., to ensure the comprehensiveness and timeliness of the scan results.

As an AWS agent, Adcros will also customize inspection strategies based on the specific business and compliance requirements of customers during the deployment of Inspector for them, making the scanning results more accurate and practical.

 

The working principle of Amazon Inspector

The workflow of Amazon Inspector can be divided into the following steps:

  1. Target selection
  2. The user first specifies the EC2 instance to be detected in the AWS console.
  3. Proxy deployment (optional)
  4. For some advanced detection functions, the Amazon Inspector Agent needs to be installed in the instance. The agent will collect runtime information within the instance, the list of installed software, etc.
  5. Rule package selection
  6. Select different Rule Packages according to your requirements, such as network reachability, CVE vulnerability detection, CIS benchmark checking, etc.
  7. Scanning and data collection
  8. Inspector will inspect the target according to the set scanning plan (ranging from 15 minutes to 12 hours) and collect relevant data.
  9. Result analysis and report generation
  10. The collected data will be matched and analyzed with the rule package to generate a detailed list of discoveries and repair suggestions.
  11. Result processing and optimization
  12. The security team can prioritize handling high-risk issues based on the report and verify the repair effect in subsequent scans.

The rule package classification of Amazon Inspector

The rule packages of Amazon Inspector are divided into two major categories:

1. Network Evaluation Rule Package (No proxy required
  • Network accessibility
  • Analyze the network security group and ACL configuration of the instance to determine whether there are issues such as overly open ports and exposed management interfaces.
2. Host Evaluation Rule Package (Proxy installation required)
  • Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE
  • Check whether there are known security vulnerabilities in the instance operating system and applications.
  • CIS benchmark inspection
  • Check whether the system configuration complies with the industry security standards released by the Internet Security Center (CIS).
  • AWS Security Best Practices
  • Specific security recommendations for the AWS environment, such as disabling insecure protocols and restricting the use of root accounts, etc.

Amazon Inspector Agent Installation and Getting Started

For scenarios where the host evaluation rule package needs to be used, the Amazon Inspector Agent must be installed in the EC2 instance. The easiest way is to perform batch deployment through AWS Systems Manager Run Command:

  1. Open the Amazon Inspector console and select the instance to be inspected.
  2. Enable the Run Command to automatically install the agent as prompted.
  3. Verify the agent status to ensure it is in operation.

In actual projects, “on the cloud” usually involves batch deployment of agents in the customer’s environment and, in combination with CloudFormation templates, achieving one-click initialization and rule configuration, significantly reducing the time to go live.

 

Amazon Inspector pricing model

Amazon Inspector’s billing is based on the number of EC2 instances evaluated by the scan and the selected rule package.

  • Free package
  • New users can run 250 free checks in the first 90 days (covering 25 instances ×10 scans).
  • Billing example
  • Suppose for 15 instances, running 5 host + network rule scans is equivalent to 75 instance evaluations. Based on the current price, it is approximately $33.75 per cycle (when there is no free quota).

For customers who continuously run security checks, “On the Cloud” will assist in evaluating the scanning frequency and scope, optimizing costs without affecting security effectiveness.

 

The differences between Amazon Inspector and other AWS security services

Although Amazon Inspector is powerful, its scanning scope mainly targets EC2 instances. To achieve more comprehensive cloud security protection, it can be used in conjunction with the following services

  • Amazon GuardDuty
  • Focus on threat detection and analyze abnormal activities of the entire AWS account based on CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS Logs.
  • AWS Security Hub
  • It provides centralized security discovery management, integrating the results of multiple security services such as Inspector, GuardDuty, and Macie to achieve unified monitoring and prioritization.

How to maximize the advantages of Amazon Inspector

  1. Integrate with the DevOps process
  2. Conduct security scans before application deployment to detect configuration vulnerabilities in advance and reduce the cost of later repair.
  3. Formulate a regular scanning plan
  4. Based on the importance of the business, set the scanning frequency reasonably, for example, once a week in the production environment and once a month in the development environment.
  5. Give priority to handling high-risk issues
  6. Focus on security discoveries with a severity level of High and avoid distractions from low-risk issues.
  7. Interact with GuardDuty and Security Hub
  8. Build a multi-level security monitoring system to achieve a closed loop of vulnerability scanning and threat detection.
  9. Optimize strategies by leveraging the experience of AWS agents
  10. When deploying Amazon Inspector for customers Adcros, it will combine the customer’s business architecture to customize rule combinations and scanning plans to ensure that the detection results are accurate and operational.

Summary

Amazon Inspector is an important part of the AWS cloud security system, capable of providing enterprises with automated and continuous vulnerability detection and security recommendations. By working in conjunction with other AWS security services, enterprises can establish a full-chain protection system from vulnerability discovery to threat response.

As an official AWS agent, “On the Cloud” not only helps enterprises quickly deploy and configure Amazon Inspector, but also provides value-added services such as security policy customization, cost optimization, and operation and maintenance support, enabling customers to enhance security while reducing operation and maintenance burdens and cost risks.

If you wish to quickly set up an efficient security detection solution in the AWS environment, please feel free to contact Adcros. Let us safeguard your cloud business.