Do you know what Is AWS Guardduty? What are its features, benefits, limitations, and more? If you don’t then read this AWS Guardduty Tutorial to learn all about it.
In 2022 there is an application for anything you need. Social life, work life, and everything in between nowadays is controlled by applications.
They allow you to dictate your life on your terms, and we believe they can do this thanks to the protection AWS Guardduty has offered them.
Role of AWS Guardduty & Similar Services in the Rise of Applications
The rise of application is one of the biggest reasons the 21st century has propelled life to new horizons.
Hence, today in this article, we are talking about one of the best threat detection and elimination services offered by Amazon Web Services, “AWS Guardduty.”
What is AWS Guardduty?
Now we understand that although AWS services are very popular around the globe. But, one has to expect that not everyone knows about them. So if you are one of the uninitiated, this article is for you.
AWS Guardduty is a service offered by Amazon Web Services to provide their applications with threat protection from all kinds of sources.
What is the Core Job of AWS Guardduty?
Amazon Guardduty is created to protect your application from all kinds and types of threats it faces in the digital world.
In layman’s terms, AWS Guardduty can be integrated with your complete AWS account, and then it can monitor and inform you wherever it encounters unusual activity.
Functions AWS Guardduty Perform For Your AWS Account
AWS Guardduty performs functions such as examining every single query on your application.
Who is logging from where, what IP they are using, is their activity in line with normalcy, or are they experiencing odd behavior?
AWS Guardduty is the Police and PI for your application.
Is AWS Guardduty Necessary For Your AWS Account in 2022
In our opinion, AWS Guardduty is an absolute necessity for any application in 2022. Expertly created applications can be a billion-dollar business, and the competitiveness of the tech industry is full of espionage.
Different companies try various methods to outdo their competition and if they know what their competitors are working on, it provides them with the edge to outperform them easily.
Why is AWS Guardduty Necessary For Your AWS Account in 2022
Professional hackers can slip through the fingers of regular protection services.
Hence, we believe you need a competent service like AWS Guardduty because it does not regulate a section or two of any application. Instead, it controls the overhauling narrative.
They know who is visiting, when they are visiting, why they are visiting, and more. They know what is expected and can alert you in an instant if they see something out of the ordinary.
This protection, according to us, is priceless; hence, we believe they are worth 100%.
Major Tasks AWS Guardduty Regularly Performs For Your AWS Account
The following are the major tasks AWS Guardduty regularly performs for your AWS account.
Monitors and Analyze All Activities on Your AWS Account
- The first and foremost task of AWS Guardduty is to monitor and analyze all activities for your Amazon Web Services account.
- There are protection services that can analyze and report may be a specific area. ut, none of them have the command to regularly monitor and explore a whole application as AWS Guardduty does.
Highlights Problems To You & Suggests Their Solution
- After monitoring and analyzing A to Z activity on our AWS account, the next major task AWS Guardduty performs is highlighting the detected problems to you.
- They inform you what the problem is and where it is occurring and suggest what you should do about that.
- AWS Guardduty has three detection levels: observation, fault, and emergency.
- So depending upon the level, they will suggest to you the level of action you should take to eliminate the problem.
Terminates Malicious Activity in Your Account
The final major task AWS Guardduty can perform for you is to terminate the malicious activity. Personally, AWS Guardduty isn’t designed to suspend or terminate any query or event.
But once it determines that your application is in grave danger. Using the help of other AWS services, they can implement this procedure to ensure no digital attack can harm the integrity of your application.
Benefits of Using AWS Guardduty
AWS Guardduty is one of the most popular complete application protection services. We believe they have achieved this status because of the following benefits they offer.
1. Protects Your AWS Account From All Threats
Claiming AWS Guardduty as the know-it-all, that watches over all wouldn’t be wrong. We believe the first and most paramount benefit they serve you is protection from all sources of threats.
2. Regularly Checks Through Every Event To Inform You of Usage of Your Account
Their second benefit is that they inform you of every activity happening in your application.
While developing an application, many people work on it but knowing who is working, when they are working, and where they are working can be liberating.
It ensures that your application is only in the hands of your team and no competitor is trying to espionage your application data through dubious means.
3. AWS Guardduty Can Manage Multiple AWS Accounts For You
The final benefit because of which we rate AWS Guardduty so highly is that its scope of work never ceases to amaze us.
Where other protection services can barely monitor part of applications, AWS Guardduty not only manages your complete AWS account but can manage multiple accounts through it.
Meaning they can monitor and analyze multiple team members of your working on the same application.
Limitation of AWS Guardduty
You have read us going gaga over how great AWS Guardduty is; however, to be entirely fair to you. We also need to inform you about their drawbacks, and the following are:
Costly Compared To Other Similar Services
We all know that AWS Guardduty can perform monitoring and analysis for your application at an unrivaled scale. But the drawback of that is that their service comes at a hefty price.
So, if you want AWS Guardduty dependable performance, you should be ready to shell out a budget that can make them practical for your application.
Relies on Other AWS Services To Provide Its Best Performance
The other major drawback of AWS Guardduty is that it is not independent. It cannot take decisions for you to protect your application.
Its job is to observe and report, so even in the case of an emergency, the best they can do is inform other applications to perform the termination or suspension task for them.
Is AWS Guardduty Amazon Web Services Only Protection Service?
AWS Guardduty is Amazon Web Services leading application protection service; however, it isn’t the only protection service offered by AWS. AWS offers various other protection services, and the following are the most prominent ones.
AWS Inspector
AWS Inspector is another protection service offered by Amazon Web Services. Its primary domain is to search for vulnerabilities in application software and look for threats in application networking.
AWS WAF
AWS Web Application Firewall is also a protection service, and its main domain is to handle protection queries related to the web only. HTTP requests and other web traffic queries are the only things they handle.
What are three common protection services from AWS?
The following are the three common protection services from AWS-
| AWS Guardduty |
| AWS Inspector |
| AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) |
Difference Between Different AWS Protection Services
AWS guardduty vs AWS shield
| Guardduty | Shield |
| This tool of AWS is from AWS basically to detect threat | Service from AWS that protects web applications from DDoS attacks. |
| Guardduty reads the logs throughout AWS and keeps the users posted in case of threats | This is something that always sits on the edge location |
| Usually detects the wrong or malicious API calls from untrusted sources using Machine Learning | Protects Load Balancers, Route 53 and CloudFront |
AWS Guardduty vs AWS WAF
| Guardduty | WAF |
| AWS Guardduty handles queries related to complete application | AWS WAF only handles queries related to the web of the application. |
| It monitors the application and any config changes and keeps the users notified for any anomalies | It sits in front of the web application to protect it from bad HTTP requests. |
AWS guardduty vs AWS Inspector
| Guardduty | Inspector |
| AWS Guardduty domain is to handle monitoring and analysis of the complete application against threats | AWS Inspector’s main domain is to search for application software and networking vulnerabilities. |
| It monitors logs to detect anomalies and kwwps the users posted | It monitors the network and other aws tools like ec2 and monitors compliance with other aws apps |
AWS guardduty vs AWS Macie
| Guardduty | Macie |
| Service from AWS to detect threats | Service for data protection using Machine Learning |
| It monitors wrong API calls and deployments to protect your account from any compromises. | Detects sensitive information and personal information and provides alerts to users. |
AWS guardduty vs AWS detective
| Guardduty | Detective |
| Detects threats in your AWS ecosystem and unauthorized activity and behaviour | On the other hand, this is used to investigate security flaws and present users with a graph for a better understanding of the problem |
FAQs of What Is AWS Guardduty
The following are the most FAQs of AWS Guardduty.
Q: What Tasks Does AWS Guardduty Perform?
AWS Guardduty monitors, analyzes, reports, and protects your application from every harm it might face.
Q: How Is AWS Guardduty More Than An Antivirus?
AWS Guardduty is more than an antivirus because it controls the whole application instead of just part of it.
Plus, by collaborating with other AWS services, it can take definite action to prevent any harm.
Q: Average Pricing I Can Expect For Using AWS graduate?
You do not have average pricing in AWS Guardduty. What you pay depends upon what you use.
However, you can visit the AWS Guardduty pricing page for estimation. Check out the AWS Guardduty pricing part to explore more.
Q: Is AWS Guardduty The Best Complete Application Protection Service?
Yes, AWS Guardduty is the best complete application protection service because of the coverage and the complete scope it can provide. No other service can.
Q: AWS guardduty siem
SIEM can be used in AWS as its available in AWS Marketplace. This can be integrated with Guardduty and use the logs with the prebuilt visualization and alerting mechanism.
Q: AWS guardduty documentation?
We have given the best information we can and for more information, you can refer to the AWS official documentation page here.
Q: AWS guardduty logs to s3?
We have very good integration between Guardduty and S3. We can send our guardduty logs to the S3 bucket.
Bottom Line
Applications in the present times control our world. However, to manipulate power, they can be attacked and hacked; thus, to protect them, AWS offers their flagship service AWS Guardduty.
In this article, we have discussed them in great detail. What do you think about this service? Do you think it is the best? Or are there better protection services available?
Let us know in the comments section. Happy Clouding!!
I am an Amazon Web Services Professional, having more than 11 years of experience in AWS and other technologies. Extensively working in various AWS tools like S3, Lambda, API, Kinesis, Load Balancers, EKS, ECS, and many more. Working as a Solution Architect and Technology Lead for Architecting and implementing the same for different clients. He provides expert solutions around the world and especially in countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Check out the complete profile on About us.
