Description:

This policy ensures that Amazon Elasticsearch Service (ES) domains are not exposed to the internet and cannot be accessed without authentication. This is important to do because exposing these domains to the internet could allow attackers to access your data or disrupt your services.

Rationale:

Keeping your ES domains closed to the internet and requiring authentication is important for the following reasons:

  • It helps to protect your data from being compromised.
  • It helps to prevent attackers from disrupting your services.
  • It helps to improve the security of your ES domains.

Impact:

If you expose your ES domains to the internet without authentication, you could be at risk of the following:

  • Data breaches
  • Service disruptions
  • Malware infections

Default Value:

AWS will recommend that you keep your ES domains closed to the internet and require authentication.

Pre-Requisite:

  • You must have access to the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI.
  • You must have the IAM permissions necessary to manage ES domains.

Remediation Steps:

To ensure that your ES domains are not exposed to the internet and require authentication, you can follow these steps:

  1. Check the security settings for your ES domains.
  2. Make sure that the "Access Policy" for your domains does not allow inbound traffic from the internet.
  3. If necessary, you can create a new security group for your domains and restrict inbound traffic to only the IP addresses or ranges that you need to allow.
  4. Enable authentication for your domains.

Test Plan:

To test whether your ES domains are exposed to the internet and require authentication, you can follow these steps:

  1. Use the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI to check the security settings for your domains.
  2. Try to connect to your ES domains from the internet using the port numbers that are used for these services.
  3. If you are able to connect to your domains from the internet without providing authentication credentials, you will need to take steps to close the ports and enable authentication.

Implementation Plan:

To implement this policy, you can follow these steps:

  1. Create a new security group for your ES domains.
  2. Restrict inbound traffic to only the IP addresses or ranges that you need to allow.
  3. Enable authentication for your domains.

AWS CLI Process:

To use the AWS CLI to ensure that your ES domains are not exposed to the internet and require authentication, you can use the following commands:

aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name my-es-sg --description "Security group for ES" aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name my-es-sg --protocol tcp --port 9200 --source-group my-es-sg aws es update-elasticsearch-domain --domain-name my-domain --access-policies "{"Cluster": "open", "Node": "open"}" aws es update-elasticsearch-domain --domain-name my-domain --authentication-enabled true

Using AWS GUI:

To use the AWS Management Console to ensure that your ES domains are not exposed to the internet and require authentication, you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to the AWS Management Console and sign in to your account.
  2. Click on the "Elasticsearch Service" service.
  3. Click on the "Domains" tab.
  4. Select the domains that you want to update the security settings for.
  5. Click on the "Security" tab.
  6. Update the "Access Policy" for the domains to "open" for the "Cluster" and "Node" types.
  7. Enable authentication for the domains.

Backout Plan:

To back out of this policy, you can follow these steps:

  1. Update the "Access Policy" for your ES domains to allow inbound traffic from the internet.
  2. Disable authentication for your domains.
  3. Delete the security group that you created in the "Implementation Plan" section.

Note:

  • This policy does not apply to ES domains that are running in a VPC.

Reference:

  • AWS Elasticsearch Service documentation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/
  • AWS Elasticsearch Service security best practices: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/security.html

Section 2:

  • Tags: security, ports, es, authentication
  • Keywords: es, authentication, ports, security