Key Points
AWS provides a number of security services, like GuardDuty, Inspector, Config, and Security Hub, to help protect cloud environments - but relying on them alone can leave security gaps and make it harder to focus on the risks that matter most. Here’s what AWS’ security services do, don’t do, and how Intruder goes further to simplify your cloud security.
Breaking Down AWS Security Services
Amazon GuardDuty
What it does
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors your AWS account and resources for malicious activity. It analyzes CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs to identify suspicious behavior like unusual API calls, unauthorized access attempts, and known bad IP addresses.
Use cases
Detecting compromised EC2 instances, identifying unusual access patterns, and flagging potential data exfiltration attempts.
Limitations
Amazon GuardDuty is primarily focused on detecting active threats at the infrastructure level. It doesn't directly address application vulnerabilities, static misconfigurations, exposed services, or over-permissive groups - which Intruder does.
Price estimate
Pricing is based on the volume of logs analyzed. For 500-1000 resources, you could expect a monthly cost ranging from $50 to $200, but this is a very rough estimate.
Amazon Inspector
What it does
Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability management service that automatically assesses your EC2 instances and Lambda functions for software vulnerabilities and security best practice deviations.
Use cases
Identifying vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications, finding deviations from security best practices (like open ports or weak passwords), and generating security reports.
Limitations
Amazon Inspector only focuses on EC2 instances and Lambda functions - it doesn't cover other AWS services or access publicly exposed assets.It also requires agents to be installed on your instances. Intruder offers agentless scanning for EC2, Amazon Route 53, and other cloud resources, providing broader coverage without the complexity of agent deployment, along with extensive external vulnerability scanning.
Price estimate
Pricing is based on the number of assessments run. For 500-1000 resources, you could expect a monthly cost starting around $50, but it depends heavily on assessment frequency.
AWS Config
What it does
AWS Config provides a detailed inventory of your AWS resources and their configurations. It allows you to track changes to your resources over time and ensures compliance with internal policies and regulatory requirements.
Use cases
Tracking resource configurations, auditing changes, and ensuring compliance with security best practices.
Limitations
AWS Config provides visibility into resource configurations and includes pre-built rules to check for misconfigurations. However, these rules are limited in assessing and triaging risk and don't offer risk ratings. Intruder checks for AWS misconfigurations daily, providing clear risk ratings to help you prioritize.
Price estimate
AWS Config pricing is based on the number of configuration items recorded. For 500-1000 resources, you might see a monthly cost starting around $100, but it depends on the complexity and frequency of changes.
AWS Security Hub
What it does
AWS Security Hub acts as a central console for managing your security findings from various AWS security services, including GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie. It provides a unified view of your security posture and helps you prioritize and manage security alerts.
Use cases
Centralizing security findings, prioritizing alerts, and automating security responses.
Limitations
AWS Security Hub aggregates findings from other services (excluding Config) and doesn't generate its own findings. Intruder consolidates all your security issues in one place, giving you insight into your cyber hygiene and helping you track important metrics like time to fix.
Price estimate
Pricing is based on the number of security checks performed. A rough estimate for 500-1000 resources could be in the $50-$150 range monthly.
How Intruder Compares: Simplified and Risk-Driven AWS Security
What it does
In one platform, Intruder delivers agentless cloud security scanning alongside its vulnerability scanning and attack surface management capabilities. All your security issues - cloud misconfigurations, ASM findings, and vulnerabilities - are in one place, complete with remediation advice, context, and severity ratings for cross-scanner prioritization. Plus, we check your cloud configuration daily to ensure it meets security best practices.
Use cases
Intruder’s cloud security scans run daily to identify:
- Misconfigurations, insecure security groups, and exposed services.
- Access control issues, including missing security controls, privilege escalation, and overly permissive IAM roles and access.
- Exposed secrets and hardcoded keys that could lead to credential leaks.
- S3 buckets and other resources that could be exposed to the internet.
- …and to verify encryption and backups to ensure critical data is protected.
Limitations
We don’t do active threat detection (yet!), so we’re not comparable to GuardDuty.
Price estimate
Cloud security scanning is included in Intruder’s Pro and Premium plans.* Find everything, protect the targets that matter.
*Up to 3 cloud accounts on Pro, unlimited accounts on Premium
Intruder vs. AWS Cloud Services: In a Nutshell
Cloud security is coming…
Intruder empowers businesses to identify critical exposures, respond faster, and prevent breaches.
From apps to cloud, its powerful scanning, intelligent prioritization, and easy-to-use platform help teams like yours to make risk-driven decisions.
Here’s how Intruder takes your AWS security to the next level:
- Unified platform: One powerful easy solution - from apps to cloud, we find and scan it all.
- Focus on real risk: Intruder helps you prioritize the issues that could lead to real breaches - when we say it’s critical, you know you have to act fast.
- User-friendly for all: Built with simplicity in mind, we empower DevOps and IT teams to spot and resolve issues fast - no cyber security expertise required.
Intruder’s cloud security scanning launches soon. Register your interest here to be the first to know!
