Amazon Inspector | Overview.

Amazon Inspector - Overview.

Scope:

• Intro, 
• Key capabilities, 
• Getting Started,      
• The Concept of Amazon Inspector,
• Amazon Inspector  goals,
• What Inspector scans / analyzes (Typical scan targets & telemetry sources)
• Core components & architecture (conceptual),
• Typical finding schema (what twtech should see),
• Detection categories & Samples,
• Integration & automation patterns (practical),
• Sample EventBridge rule (JSON) to capture high/critical Inspector findings,
• Sample Lambda handler (Python) to auto-initiate remediation on EC2 via SSM,
• Operational runbooks (Samples) High-severity CVE on EC2 (playbook)
• Operational runbooks (Samples) Critical CVE in ECR image (playbook)
• Deployment checklist (quick),
• Tuning & prioritization guidance,
• Costs & limits (guidance),
• Limitations & gotchas (What to watch out for),
• Useful Security Operations Center (SOC) metrics to track,
• Sample Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & dashboards.

Intro:

• Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability management service that continuously scans AWS workloads for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. 
• Amazon Inspector automatically discovers and assesses resources across twtech AWS organization.
• Amazon Inspector provides a severity ratings and remediation guidance for any findings.

Key capabilities include:

• Automated Discovery: Continually identifies and tracks EC2 instances, container images in Amazon ECR, and Lambda functions as they are deployed.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Evaluates workloads for known software vulnerabilities (CVEs) and assesses network reachability to identify potential exposure.
• Agentless & Agent-based Scanning: Offers flexibility by using either the AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Agent or a new agentless scanning mode for EC2 instances.
• Continuous Monitoring: Scans are triggered automatically by events, such as the installation of new software or the release of a new CVE, ensuring up-to-date security posture.
• Centralized Management: Integrates with AWS Organizations to allow a delegated administrator to manage and view findings across all member accounts.
• Compliance Support: Helps meet security and compliance requirements by assessing deviations from best practices and performing CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmark scans.

Getting Started  

• twtech needs to activate the service through the Amazon Inspector Console.

1 ,  The Concept of Amazon Inspector

• Amazon Inspector is AWS managed service for discovering security issues in twtech AWS accounts & workloads.

Amazon Inspector  goals:

• Continuously identify:
• vulnerabilities,
• insecure configurations in:
• Instances, 
• Images, 
• Serverless functions.
• Prioritize findings for:
• Severity, 
• CVSS, 
• Exploitability 
• Provide actionable remediation guidance.
• Integrate with AWS automation tols like:
• EventBridge, 
• Lambda, 
• Systems Manager (SSM)) 
• Security Event Management (SIEMs) for:
•  Triage,
•  Remediation.
• There are two generations of Amazon Inspector (historically):

• Inspector Classic
• Inspector2.

•  Modern usage of Amazon Inspector  is centers around the current, continuously-scanning Inspector service (often called Inspector2)
•   Inspector2 focuses on:
• multi-account continuous scanning, 
• image/Lambda/instance coverage, 
• centralized findings.

2 ,  What Inspector scans / analyzes (Typical scan targets & telemetry sources):

• EC2 instances — OS packages, application packages, and optionally an agent-based scan. Agentless scanning is often possible via SSM inventory/insights.
• Container images in ECR — image layers and packages scanned at push and continuously (image CVEs).
• Lambda functions — the function package and its dependencies scanned for library/package CVEs.
• OS/package metadata — NPM/Python/Ruby/JAR/OS package manifests (the service derives SBOM-like inventory).
• Software configuration checks — CIS benchmark checks and common misconfigurations (depending on enabled checks).
• Vulnerability intelligence — CVE databases, vendor advisories, and exploitability metadata to rank severity.

3,   Core components & architecture (conceptual)

1.     Collectors / Scanners

• ECR integration scans images on push and periodically.
• EC2 scanning via agent or SSM-driven inventory.
• Lambda scans via packaged dependencies at deployment or during periodic assessment.

2.     Analysis Engine

• Matches package metadata to CVE databases and rules.
• Computes severity, CVSS, and provides remediation steps (package fixes, upgrade versions).
• Deduplicates and groups related findings.

3.     Findings Store

• Centralized, per-account findings that include metadata: resource id, region, package name/version, CVE, CVSS, remediation, first/last seen.

4.     Publishing / Integration

• Findings visible in the Inspector console.
• Forwarding via EventBridge, Security Hub, or via APIs to SIEMs and S3 for archiving.
• Multi-account aggregation (via Organizations) to enable centralized scanning and reporting.

4,   Typical finding schema (what twtech should see):

• Finding ID (unique)
• Resource (EC2 instance id, ECR image digest, Lambda ARN)
• Finding type (vulnerability, CIS check, configuration)
• Package / Component (e.g., openssl 1.0.2k)
• CVE ID(s) (e.g., CVE-YYYY-XXXX)
• Severity (Low / Medium / High / Critical)
• Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) numeric.
• Exploitability / Public exploit evidence (if known)
• Remediation steps (update package to X, replace image, apply patch)
• Timestamps (first seen, last seen)
• Account & Region metadata

5,   Detection categories and Samples

• Package CVEs: outdated library with known CVE.
• OS-level vulnerabilities: kernel / system libraries needing patch.
• Container image vulnerabilities: insecure base images, outdated packages.
• Function vulnerabilities: vulnerable runtime dependencies in Lambda zip/layers.
• Configuration / Policy checks (when enabled): missing hardening controls, insecure permissions.
• Package misconfiguration: e.g., a web server exposing debug endpoints.

6,   Integration & automation patterns (practical)

• EventBridge → Lambda: route Inspector findings by severity to Lambda for triage (create ticket, notify Slack/SysOps, or start remediation).
• Inspector → Security Hub: centralize findings and use Security Hub insights/playbooks.
• Inspector → SIEM / S3: export to SIEM for long-term correlation; export to S3 for retention and offline analytics.
• Auto-remediation with SSM: for EC2, use SSM Run Command or Patch Manager to apply updates automatically for low-risk fixes.
• CI/CD gate: block image promotion when ECR image scan reports critical CVEs; integrate with CodePipeline or scanning step.
• Shift-left: run static scanning in build pipelines against the same CVE database sets to catch issues before deployment.

7,  Sample EventBridge rule (JSON) to capture high/critical Inspector findings:

# json

{

  "source": ["aws.inspector2"],

  "detail-type": ["Inspector2 Finding"],

  "detail": {

    "severity": [{"numeric": [">=", 7.0]}],

    "status": ["ACTIVE"]

  }

}

# Sample Lambda handler (Python) to auto-initiate remediation on EC2 via SSM:

# python

import boto3

import twtech

ssm = boto3.client('ssm')

inspector = boto3.client('inspector2')  # or use event payload

def lambda_handler(event, context):

    finding = event['detail']

    resource = finding['resource']['id']

    # Example: trigger SSM Run Command to update packages

    response = ssm.send_command(

        InstanceIds=[resource],

        DocumentName='AWS-RunPatchBaseline',  # or custom patch document

        Parameters={'Operation': ['Install']}

    )

    # Persist or ticket the run_command id for audit

    return {'status': 'started', 'command_id': response['Command']['CommandId']}

NB:

• Adapt detail parsing and event source names for twtech environment. Always test in staging.

8,A.   Operational runbooks (Samples) High-severity CVE on EC2 (playbook)

1. Alert: EventBridge triggers SOC channel and creates a ticket.

2. Triage: Validate finding — confirm instance, package, and confirm whether exploit in environment (public exposure, open ports).

3. Contain (if exploited or exposed): isolate ENI (move to quarantine subnet / update NACLs), stop instance if needed, snapshot disks (for forensics).

4. Remediate:

•    Preferred: patch via SSM Run Command / Patch Manager (apply updates).
•    If patch unavailable: replace instance via image build with patched AMI.

5. Verify: Re-scan with Inspector to confirm fix; monitor for recurrence.

6. Post-mortem: root cause analysis (incident review, retrospective, or lessons learned); update CI/CD to prevent reintroduction.

8,B. Operational runbooks (Samples) Critical CVE in ECR image (playbook)

1. Block promotion of this image (CI/CD).
2. Rebuild image with patched base image or updated dependency.
3. Retest container, re-run image scan and integration tests.
4. Deploy patched image to production following canary/blue-green.
5. Deprecate (or delete) old image tags and update image lifecycle policies.

9,   Deployment checklist (quick)

• Enable Inspector across accounts (use Organizations for delegated admin).
• Configure ECR image scanning on push and scheduled scanning.
• Ensure EC2 inventory/SSM agent coverage for agentless scanning where possible.
• Enable Lambda scanning for functions.
• Hook Inspector findings into EventBridge and Security Hub.
• Configure retention/export (S3 or SIEM).
• Define automated playbooks for critical/urgent severities.
• Define a patch policy and test SSM remediation runbooks.

10,   Tuning & prioritization guidance

• Tune scanning cadence: frequent enough for your risk posture, mindful of quotas.
•  Prioritize by exploitability: CVSS + presence of public exploit code + internet exposure.
• Group findings: use grouping by package + CVE to reduce noise.
• Suppress / mark as accepted: document compensating controls for false-positives (e.g., immutable read-only environments).
• Shift-left: integrate image/library scanning into dev pipelines to reduce production churn(vulnerabilities).

11,   Costs & limits (high-level guidance)

• Expect costs from: image scan counts, API calls, multi-account aggregated scanning, and data export. Tuning scanning frequency and limiting non-critical accounts helps.
• Use lifecycle policies in ECR and selective scanning if cost-constrained.

12,   Limitations & gotchas (What to watch out for)

• Not a full runtime EDR: Inspector finds vulnerabilities in artifacts and configurations; it’s not a behavioral endpoint detection product (use alongside EDR solutions).
• Coverage variance: scanning quality depends on whether you use agent or agentless methods and whether the package metadata is visible.
• False positives: package metadata mismatch or custom-built packages without upstream CVE mapping may show ambiguous findings.
• Remediation complexity: some vulnerable libraries are transitive dependencies; remediation may require code changes or dependency upgrades.

13,   Useful Security Operations Center (SOC) metrics to track

• Time-to-detect (TTD) — time between vulnerability disclosure and detection in your estate.
• Time-to-remediate (TTR) — measured per severity bucket.
• Number of critical/active findings (trend).
• Percentage of images failing scan at build-time vs production-time.
• Patch compliance rate (by baseline).

14, Sample Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & dashboards

• Weekly count of newly detected critical CVEs across accounts.
• Mean days to remediate (critical/important).
• ECR image pass rate at push.
• EC2 instances missing SSM coverage.