Introducing new capabilities to AWS CloudTrail Lake to boost your cloud visibility and investigations


Voiced by Polly

Right now, I’m excited to announce new updates to AWS CloudTrail Lake, which is a managed information lake you need to use to combination, immutably retailer, and question occasions recorded by AWS CloudTrail for auditing, safety investigation, and operational troubleshooting.

The brand new updates in CloudTrail Lake are:

  • Enhanced filtering choices for CloudTrail occasions
  • Cross-account sharing of occasion information shops
  • Normal availability of the generative AI–powered pure language question era
  • AI-powered question outcomes summarization functionality in preview
  • Complete dashboard capabilities, together with a high-level overview dashboard with AI-powered insights (AI-powered insights is in preview), a collection of 14 pre-built dashboards for varied use instances, and the flexibility to create customized dashboards with scheduled refreshes

Let’s look into the brand new options one after the other.

Enhanced filtering choices for CloudTrail occasions ingested into occasion information shops
Enhanced occasion filtering capabilities offer you larger management over which CloudTrail occasions are ingested into your occasion information shops. These enhanced filtering choices present tighter management over your AWS exercise information, enhancing the effectivity and precision of safety, compliance, and operational investigations. Moreover, the brand new filtering choices allow you to cut back your evaluation workflow prices by ingesting solely probably the most related occasion information into your CloudTrail Lake occasion information shops.

You may filter each administration and information occasions based mostly on attributes resembling eventSource, eventType, eventName, userIdentity.arn, and sessionCredentialFromConsole.

I am going to the AWS CloudTrail console and select Occasion information shops underneath Lake within the navigation pane. I select Create occasion information retailer. In step one, I enter a reputation within the Occasion information retailer identify subject. For this demo, I go away different fields as default. You may select the pricing and retention choices that fit your wants. Within the subsequent step, I select Managements occasions and Knowledge occasions underneath CloudTrail occasions. You may embrace all of the choices you want underneath CloudTrail occasions. You even have the choice to decide on ingestion choices. I select Ingest occasions to begin ingesting when it’s created. There could also be situations, once you need to deselect the Ingest occasions choice to cease an occasion information retailer from ingesting occasions. For instance, you might be copying path occasions to the occasion information retailer and don’t want the occasion information retailer to gather any future occasions. You may as well select to allow ingestion for all accounts in your group or embrace solely the present area in your occasion information retailer.

The next instance exhibits an out of the field template for filtering, which excludes any administration occasions which are initiated by an AWS Service. I select Superior occasion assortment underneath the Administration occasions. I select Exclude AWS service-initiated occasions from the Log selector template dropdown. You may as well increase the JSON view to see how the filters really apply.

Underneath the Knowledge occasions, the next instance creates a filter to incorporate DynamoDB information occasions initiated by a sure consumer, serving to me to log occasions based mostly on an IAM principal. I select DynamoDB as Useful resource sort. I select Customized as Log selector template. Underneath the Superior occasion selector, I select userIdentity.arn as Discipline and equals as Operator. I enter the consumer’s ARN as Worth. I select Subsequent and select Create occasion information retailer within the closing step.

Now, I’ve my occasion information retailer that provides me granular management over the ingested CloudTrail information.

This expanded set of filtering choices lets you be extra selective in capturing solely probably the most related occasions in your safety, compliance, and operational wants.

Cross-account sharing of occasion information shops
You need to use the cross-account sharing function of occasion information shops to boost collaborative evaluation inside organizations. It allows safe sharing of occasion information shops with chosen AWS principals by Useful resource-Primarily based Insurance policies (RBP). This performance permits licensed entities to question shared occasion information shops throughout the identical AWS Area the place they have been created. 

To make use of this function, I am going to the AWS CloudTrail console and select Occasion information shops underneath Lake within the navigation pane. I select an occasion information retailer from the record and navigate to its particulars web page. I select Edit within the Useful resource coverage part. The next instance coverage features a assertion that enables root customers in accounts 111111111111, 222222222222, and 333333333333 to run queries and get question outcomes on the occasion information retailer owned by account ID 999999999999. I select Save adjustments to avoid wasting the coverage.

Generative AI–powered pure language question era in CloudTrail Lake is now typically out there
In June, we introduced this function for CloudTrail Lake in preview. With this launch, you possibly can generate SQL queries utilizing pure language questions to simply discover and analyze AWS exercise logs (solely administration, information, and community exercise occasions) while not having technical SQL experience. The function makes use of generative AI to transform pure language questions into ready-to-use SQL queries you possibly can run straight within the CloudTrail Lake console. This simplifies the method of exploring occasion information shops and retrieving insights resembling error counts, prime companies used, and the causes of errors. This function can be accessible by the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), offering extra flexibility for customers preferring command-line operations. The preview weblog publish offers step-by-step directions on find out how to get began with the pure language question era function in CloudTrail Lake.

CloudTrail Lake generative AI–powered question outcomes summarization functionality in preview
Constructing on the potential of pure language question era, we’re introducing a brand new AI-powered question outcomes summarization function in preview to additional simplify the method of analyzing AWS account exercise. With this function, you possibly can simply extract beneficial insights out of your AWS exercise logs (solely administration, information, and community exercise occasions) by mechanically summarizing the important thing factors out of your question ends in pure language, decreasing the effort and time required to know the data.

To do this function, I am going to the AWS CloudTrail console and select Question underneath Lake within the navigation pane. I select an occasion information retailer for my CloudTrail Lake question from the dropdown record in Occasion information retailer. You need to use summarization no matter whether or not the question was written manually or generated by generative AI. For this instance, I’ll use the pure language question era functionality. Within the Question generator, I enter the next immediate within the Immediate subject utilizing pure language:

What number of errors have been logged through the previous month for every service and what was the reason for every error?

Then, I select Generate question. The next SQL question is mechanically generated:

SELECT eventsource,
    errorcode,
    errormessage,
    depend(*) as errorcount
FROM a0******
WHERE eventtime >= '2024-10-14 00:00:00'
    AND eventtime <= '2024-11-14 23:59:59'
    AND (
        errorcode IS NOT NULL
        OR errormessage IS NOT NULL
    )
GROUP BY 1,
    2,
    3
ORDER BY 4 DESC;

I select Run to get the outcomes. To make use of the summarization functionality, I select Summarize outcomes within the Question outcomes tab. CloudTrail mechanically analyzes the question outcomes and offers a pure language abstract of the important thing insights. It’s necessary to notice that there’s a month-to-month quota of three MB for question outcomes that may be summarized.

This new summarization functionality can prevent effort and time in understanding your AWS exercise information by mechanically producing significant summaries of the important thing findings.

Complete dashboard capabilities
Lastly, let me let you know in regards to the new dashboard capabilities of CloudTrail Lake to boost visibility and evaluation throughout your AWS environments.

The primary one is a Highlights dashboard that gives you with an easy-to-view abstract of the information captured in your CloudTrail Lake administration and information occasions saved in occasion information shops. This dashboard makes it simpler to rapidly establish and perceive necessary insights, resembling the highest failed API calls, traits in failed login makes an attempt, and spikes in useful resource creation. It surfaces any anomalies or uncommon traits within the information.

I am going to the AWS CloudTrail console and select Dashboard underneath Lake within the navigation pane to take a look at the Highlights dashboard. First, I allow Highlights dashboard by selecting Agree and allow Highlights.

I try the Highlights dashboard as soon as it populates with information.

The second addition to the brand new dashboard capabilities is a collection of 14 pre-built dashboards. These dashboards are designed for various personas and use instances. For instance, the security-focused dashboards allow you to to trace and analyze key safety indicators, resembling prime entry denied occasions, failed console login makes an attempt, and customers who’ve disabled multi-factor authentication (MFA). There are additionally pre-built dashboards for operational monitoring, highlighting traits in errors and availability points, resembling prime APIs with throttling errors and prime customers with errors. You may as well use the dashboards centered on particular AWS companies resembling Amazon EC2 and Amazon DynamoDB, which allow you to establish safety dangers or operational issues inside these specific service environments.

You may create your personal dashboards and optionally set schedules for refreshing them. This degree of customization helps you tailor the CloudTrail Lake evaluation capabilities to your exact monitoring and investigative wants throughout your AWS environments.

I swap to the Managed and customized dashboards to look at the customized and pre-built dashboards.

I select IAM exercise dashboard pre-built dashboard to look at general IAM exercise. You may select Save as new dashboard to customise this dashboard.

To create a customized dashboard from scratch, I am going to Dashboard underneath Lake within the navigation pane and select Construct my very own dashboard. I enter a reputation within the Enter a reputation for the dashboard subject and select occasion information shops underneath Permissions, to visualise the occasions. Subsequent, I select Create dashboard.

Now, I can add widgets to my dashboard. You’ve gotten the pliability to customise your dashboards in a number of methods. You may choose from a listing of pre-built pattern widgets utilizing Add pattern widget, or you possibly can create your personal customized widgets utilizing Create new widget. For every widget, you possibly can select the kind of visualization you like, resembling a line graph, bar graph, or different choices to greatest symbolize your information.

Now out there
The brand new options in AWS CloudTrail Lake symbolize a significant development in offering a complete audit logging and evaluation answer. These enhancements present the flexibility to realize extra profound understanding and conduct investigations extra quickly, aiding with extra preventative monitoring and quicker incident dealing with throughout your whole AWS environments.

Now you can begin utilizing generative AI–powered pure language question era in CloudTrail Lake in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), and Europe (London) AWS Areas.

CloudTrail Lake generative AI–powered question outcomes summarization functionality is accessible in preview in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Areas.

Enhanced filtering choices, cross-account sharing of occasion information shops and dashboards can be found in all of the Areas the place CloudTrail Lake is accessible, except for generative AI–powered summarization function on the Highlights dashboard being out there solely in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Areas.

Working queries will incur CloudTrail Lake question costs. For extra particulars on pricing, go to AWS CloudTrail pricing.

— Esra

Recent Articles

Related Stories

Leave A Reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here