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Sensitive Data on AWS: Scanning Services for Your Amazon S3 Buckets

Amazon S3 is the go-to storage service for a wide variety of cloud-based applications. It's highly available, highly scalable, and the most cost-efficient storage solution on the AWS platform. But that doesn’t mean the sensitive private data you store on Amazon S3 is protected or organized in a way to help facilitate data governance and compliance.

What can you do to sort through all the unstructured data in your buckets? Download the new guide book on Amazon S3 and AWS scanning tools and services to find out more, and read on to get a better idea of why keeping track of the data in your Amazon S3 buckets is crucial to your business.

Download the S3 Bucket Data Privacy Scanners Overview here.

Major Leaks, Major Fines: The Reasons for AWS Security Services and AWS Monitoring Services

Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is a widely used object-based storage service known primarily for initiating the widespread use of the cloud. But while popular, in large part because of its low cost, there are some major AWS S3 security challenges.

Why should security play a crucial role when it comes to storing data in Amazon S3? Clients from different business sectors can use AWS S3 solutions for various reasons, such as collecting and securing large amounts of data used by and for websites, backups, archives, IoT devices, and big data analysis.

In Amazon S3, the customer is responsible for managing S3 buckets and the data transferred to and saved on them. For their part of the shared liability model, AWS is responsible for maintaining the network, hardware security, and the availability of S3 services. There is no guarantee from AWS that they can keep your data on AWS S3 secure. That means security-relevant mistakes that could cause Amazon S3 data to be lost—and any subsequent compliance violations that might result from that loss—are completely on the user.

Uber was fined $1.2 million in the EU and UK and settled in the US for $148 million after one of their S3 buckets was hacked and user data exposed. Facebook had 540 million user records leak, and while legal action is still forthcoming, their previous misuse of private user data led to a $5 billion fine. There are many stories like these, and they all highlight the importance of protecting data in Amazon S3. The renewed focus on protecting sensitive private data, thanks to the powerful new data privacy regulations, are only adding to this issue.

But the way data is stored on S3 itself can make this a challenge. S3 is designed to store unstructured data. That presents a challenge when it comes to tracking and protecting sensitive information. Tracking this data requires capabilities that go beyond AWS security services or AWS monitoring services. Enter the new breed of Amazon S3 bucket scanning tools such as Amazon Macie and NetApp Cloud Data Sense for Amazon S3 Buckets.

For the full review of all the major Amazon S3 and AWS scanning tools and services, including AWS Macie, AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Symantec Cloud Workload Protection for Amazon Web Services, and NetApp Cloud Data Sense for Amazon S3 Buckets, check out our complete guidebook now.

Choose the Right Tools 

In today's IT landscape of large-scale data collection and storage, Amazon S3 is heavily relied upon as an affordable unstructured object storage service on AWS. Scanning tools for your Amazon S3 buckets will play a pivotal role in making sure that data, including the sensitive private data of your users, stays protected.

Read the S3 Bucket Data Privacy Scanners Overview to find out more.

For the best control over your sensitive private data stored in Amazon S3, NetApp Cloud Data Sense offers the most detailed and accurate results through a straightforward user interface.

  • Automatically map and identify sensitive data in Amazon S3 buckets
  • Empower internal data privacy and compliance teams                                  
  • Easily generate DPIAs and DSARs                                  
  • Maintain privacy controls                                  
  • Ensure sensitive data is stored in the right buckets

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Senior Marketing and Strategy Manager