News | Cloud Storage Security

The Challenge

Like many public sector agencies, this organization uses Amazon S3 to ingest and store large amounts of data from third party vendors and data brokers for processing.

During a security audit, it was determined that the ingestion of TB of data each month from outside sources is a major attack vector. There was no assurance that the data has been scanned for malware and viruses before it was processed and accessed by agency staff or shared externally with partner agencies.

A wide range of solutions ingest data, store it in Amazon S3 buckets, and share it with downstream users. Often, the ingested data is coming from third-party sources, opening the door to potentially malicious files. This technical deep dive explores how Antivirus for Amazon S3 by Cloud Storage Security allows you to quickly and easily deploy a multi-engine anti-malware scanning solution to manage file protection and malware findings.

Cloud Storage Security is always working to improve our users’ experience and we’re excited to share the following Antivirus for Amazon S3 update: support for Amazon WorkDocs.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) launched over 16 years ago and today houses over 200 trillion objects making it one of the most successful services provided by AWS. Organizations use Amazon S3 to build data lakes, run cloud-native applications, backup and restore critical data, and archive data at low cost. Amazon S3's popularity has made it the center pin of cloud computing. This popularity has opened the door to advanced threats such as malware, ransomware, viruses, worms, trojans, and more.

If you ingest files into Amazon S3 from third-party sources that can eventually enter an environment where they become executable, you're opening the door to malicious payloads. Learn how to protect your users, customers and partners from ransomware, viruses, trojans and more during this detailed and technical event - Antivirus For Amazon S3 Workshop: Malware Scanning For Application Workflows.  This article includes links to register as well as what's being covered and who would benefit most from attending. 

AWS celebrated 16 years since the launch of Amazon S3 with AWS Pi Day on March 14, 2022. Since the beginning of the year, some incredible announcements have been made including improvements to file integrity, the new Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class, general availability of AWS Backup, and much more. With over 200 trillion files being stored (that’s 29,000 files per person on earth) and more than 100 million requests per second for files, S3 is used now more than ever. However, there’s still one aspect of storage security that continues to be overlooked — the topic of antivirus scanning.

Cloud Storage Security is always working to improve our users’ experience and we’re excited to share the following Antivirus for Amazon S3 updates: AWS Security Hub integration, what the actual file type that's being scanned is, plus more. 

It is well known that malware can disrupt the availability of critical assets and data, impairing an organization’s ability to operate. It is key that organizations remain vigilant and defend against malware across all potential entry points.  

Recently, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint cybersecurity advisory to raise awareness regarding destructive malware and provide preventative recommendations.

This year, cybersecurity continues to be a buzzword among decision-makers looking to future-proof their organizations. Recent surveys show that 44% of security leaders anticipate increasing their cybersecurity budgets within the next 12 months. By the end of the year, cybersecurity spending is estimated to hit $172 billion.

That said, cybersecurity isn’t a consistent industry. Just because you have a hefty budget doesn’t guarantee safety. Instead, a decent budget is best paired with an awareness of the cybersecurity trends that may impact organizations the most. Before you or your cybersecurity provider make any concrete plans or investments, first, here are some timely trends you should consider:

Cloud Storage Security is always working to improve our users’ experience and we’re excited to share some of the new features that we’ve added to Antivirus for Amazon S3 — Single Sign On (SSO), Load Balancer Improvement, XL File Scanning, and Scan on Access.