Trusted Advisor vs Inspector

AWS Trusted Advisor vs. AWS Inspector

AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Inspector are both AWS services designed to help improve the security and performance of your AWS environment, but they focus on different aspects and provide different types of insights.

AWS Trusted Advisor

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. It analyzes your AWS environment and provides recommendations in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits.

Key Features of AWS Trusted Advisor:

1. Cost Optimization:

• Identifies opportunities to reduce your monthly spend by eliminating unused or idle resources.
• Provides recommendations on reserved instance usage.

2. Performance:

• Offers suggestions to improve the performance of your AWS services.
• Helps identify underperforming instances and inefficient resource configurations.

3. Security:

• Highlights security best practices, such as enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) and reviewing security group rules.
• Identifies exposed access keys and other security vulnerabilities.

4. Fault Tolerance:

• Recommends actions to improve the availability and redundancy of your AWS environment.
• Suggests enabling automated backups and disaster recovery plans.

5. Service Limits:

• Monitors your usage against AWS service limits and alerts you when you are approaching or exceeding them.
• Helps prevent disruptions due to limit breaches.

Use Cases for AWS Trusted Advisor:

• Reducing costs by identifying and eliminating underutilized resources.
• Enhancing security by following best practice recommendations.
• Improving performance and fault tolerance of your AWS infrastructure.
• Monitoring service limits to avoid potential disruptions.

AWS Inspector

AWS Inspector is a security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. It automatically assesses applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices.

Key Features of AWS Inspector:

1. Automated Security Assessments:

• Runs automated assessments on your AWS resources to identify vulnerabilities and potential security issues.
• Provides detailed findings with severity levels and remediation recommendations.

2. Compliance Checks:

• Assesses your applications against industry standards and best practices, such as CIS Benchmarks.
• Helps ensure compliance with security policies and regulatory requirements.

3. Integration with Other AWS Services:

• Integrates with AWS Security Hub, AWS CloudWatch, and AWS Lambda for enhanced security orchestration and response.
• Allows automated remediation and alerting based on assessment results.

4. Continuous Monitoring:

• Provides continuous security assessments to keep your applications secure over time.
• Detects new vulnerabilities as they arise and provides updated findings.

Use Cases for AWS Inspector:

• Conducting security assessments and vulnerability scans on AWS resources.
• Ensuring compliance with security standards and regulations.
• Identifying and remediating security vulnerabilities in applications.
• Integrating with other AWS security services for automated security operations.

Comparison

Summary

• AWS Trusted Advisor provides high-level recommendations across cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits. It is useful for ensuring that your AWS environment adheres to best practices and is cost-efficient.
• AWS Inspector provides detailed security assessments and vulnerability scans. It is focused on identifying and remediating security issues and ensuring compliance with security standards and regulations.

Using both AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Inspector together can provide a comprehensive approach to optimizing and securing your AWS environment, ensuring that you follow best practices while also identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities.