If you need to secure your AWS infrastructure, consider using Amazon Inspector. Amazon Inspector is the best option. Amazon Inspector is a powerful tool for automated security systems that improves the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS.
It helps to streamline the security assessment process. With the advancement of technology, the number of cyber attacks and vulnerabilities also increased. That’s why organizations should prioritize the security of their cloud infrastructure.
AWS Inspector provides an automated security assessment, allowing you to identify potential security issues and vulnerabilities in your AWS resources.
This blog will cover everything you need to know about the Amazon Inspector.
Table of Contents
What is Amazon Inspector?
Amazon Inspector is a security tool that automates security assessments &helps you identify vulnerabilities within your AWS environment. Furthermore, it enables you to make security testing a more frequent event as a part of development and IT operations. Amazon Inspector helps identify the error and any bug issues. It is also possible to analyze these findings directly or as a component of complete evaluation records that are available via the AWS Inspector UI or API. You can find vulnerabilities in EC2 instances and unapproved network access to them with the help of AWS Inspector security evaluations.
It works by first defining a target set of resources using tags, then configuring an assessment template that defines what we’re looking for (common vulnerabilities and exploits (CVEs), PCI requirements, and so on), and finally running an assessment against our target resources, examining the research results, and resolving any issues discovered.
Features of AWS Inspector
1. Automated Security Assessments
Amazon Inspector identifies different types of vulnerabilities, including software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure that can be used to compromise workloads, repurpose resources for malicious use, or facilitate data exfiltration. It automates the process of assessment. This automation is crucial for continuous security, monitoring, and compliance.
2. Integration with AWS Services
Amazon Inspector works beyond Amazon EC2, Amazon Lambda functions, and Amazon Container Registry (ECR) Container Images. Amazon Inspector’s value is increased through integrations with AWS Security Hub and Amazon EventBridge, which provide automated response mechanisms and simplified security management.
3. Continuous Scanning
By providing continuous scanning capabilities, Amazon Inspector adjusts to the dynamic nature of cloud environments. This guarantees continuous monitoring and evaluation of your AWS resources in real-time, kicking in when modifications happen or security flaws are found.
4. Predefined Assessment Template
Predefined templates assess network configuration and security. These templates allow users to perform comprehensive and pertinent evaluations by covering various checks.
5. Error Finding and Recommendations
Following each evaluation, Amazon Inspector generates a prioritized list of recommendations along with comprehensive findings. With the help of this actionable intelligence, AWS customers can improve their security posture by quickly resolving issues.
6. Amazon Inspector Risk Score for Findings
Amazon Inspector assigns a highly contextualised Amazon Inspector risk assessment to each finding by combining CVE information with environmental elements like network reachability and exploitability data.
This helps prioritize the findings and highlights the most important findings and vulnerable resources. The Amazon Inspector score computation (as well as the factors that drove the score) may be found on the Amazon Inspector Score tab in the Findings Details sidebar.After collecting the necessary information and data, it will be compared with the built-in security rule package to identify the security issue.This helps prioritize the findings and highlights the most important findings and vulnerable resources. The Amazon Inspector score computation (as well as the factors that drove the score) may be found on the Amazon Inspector Score tab in the Findings Details sidebar.
7. Automatic Closure of Remediated Findings
If a vulnerability has been fixed or mitigated, Amazon Inspector will automatically identify it. Without requiring human input, it immediately transforms the finding’s state to closed after detection.
8. Integration with Developer Tools
To evaluate container images, Jenkins and TeamCity can be integrated with Amazon Inspector. The use of these CI/CD tools enables developers to evaluate their container images, advancing security sooner in the software development lifecycle. You can take quick automated action in response to serious security vulnerabilities, including halting builds or image pushes to container registries, using the findings that are displayed in the dashboard of the CI/CD tool. You can host your continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools anywhere—on AWS, on-premises, or in hybrid clouds—so that developers can consistently utilize one solution throughout all of your development pipelines.
How Amazon Inspector works
Amazon inspectors conduct security checks and generate an automated findings report that includes steps to keep the AWS infrastructure secure. To use it, you need to define the EC2 instance that you want to check and test. Then install the Amazon Inspector Agent. Additionally, schedule a check against your EC2 instance that will run every day for a predetermined number of days. The check period can range from 15 minutes to 12 hours.

Getting started with Amazon Inspector
After the installation of the Amazon Inspector agent, run a check on your EC2 instance. To utilize Amazon Inspector, we will launch a security thread, open port 21 on EC2, and create an instance of EC2. It is typically not advisable to leave Port 21 open on your instances. Take the actions outlined below:
1. Create an EC2 Instance: The first step is to sign up for an AWS account and then start a Linux EC2 instance.
- Select Launch Instance.
- Choose Amazon Linux AMI (HVM) SSD Volume Type from the drop-down menu.
- Select Subnet and enable auto-assignment of public IP addresses.
- Create a tag for your Amazon EC2 instance.
- Configure the Security Group and choose EC2-SG (existing security group)
2. Edit the Security Group and Open Port 21: Once the EC2 instance has been launched, we must modify the security group and open port 21.
3. Create an Assessment Template: Following the assessment aim, create an assessment template.
- Please provide a name for it: K21assessmenttemp
- Set Duration: 15 minutes ( as a demo)
- Uncheck the Assessment schedule, and then press Next.
4. The assessment run will begin automatically. Now, go back to the findings and go over the risk.
5. Delete Open Ports: Return to EC2 and delete open ports.
6. We will do the assessment and examine the results after the open ports have been successfully closed; this time, no high-risk indicators are present.
Cost of AWS Inspector
- Host Assessment Rule Package: The host assessment rule packages for Amazon Inspector Classic use an agent installed on the Amazon EC2 instances running the applications you want to test. Each month, host rule assessments are billed per agent, per assessment. When you conduct one assessment against one agent, you get one agent assessment; when you run one assessment against ten, you get ten agent assessments. Pricing begins at $0.30 per agent assessment per month and can be reduced to as low as $0.05 per agent assessment per month with volume discounts.
- Cost of Network Reachability Rules: The cost of network reachability rules is changed per month per instance per assessment. If you perform one assessment against ten instances, you will get ten instance assessments. Pricing begins at $0.15 per instance assessment per month and can be reduced to $0.04 per instance assessment per month with bulk discounts.
Benefits of Amazon Inspector
Amazon Inspector is an effective tool used to secure the AWS cloud service, deployed apps, etc. It’s an automated service. Let’s discuss some of the key benefits:
- An automated tool that enhances application security in the AWS cloud is called AWS Inspector. It can repair itself without using human resources.
- It contains a large amount of information and rules that are linked to popular security best practices and vulnerability descriptions. You can get the best of both worlds with AWS, as they always update security best practices and standards.
- Regular Security Monitoring: Amazon Inspector discovers security problems in the app, as well as deviations from standard practices, both before and during production. This improves the security of your AWS-hosted applications. It is an API-based utility that assesses network configurations in your AWS account. Furthermore, it employs an optional agent to acquire insight into EC2 instances.
- Development and operations teams can make security inspections a requirement for deployment by incorporating inspector assessments into their current DeOps workflow.
Amazon Inspector service with Supprtfly
As your managed Amazon Inspector services provider, our goal is to help your business fully utilize AWS. With our Managed Amazon Inspector Consulting Services, you can focus on your core operations while we manage the complexities of the cloud. As your trusted partner on this cloud journey, we’ll work together to discover new opportunities and drive growth in the digital era.
- 24×7 Ticket Support Using Our Helpdesk
- Secured infrastructure setup
- AWS CodeBuild (CI/CD)
- AWS Cost Optimization
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- AWS Disaster Recovery & Backup
- Full Linux & Windows Instance Support
- Setup private or hybrid cloud
- Experts in creating a scalable infrastructure
- High availability (99.95%), hyper-scalability
- Highly Scalable & Flexible Solutions
Conclusion
Within the AWS ecosystem, Amazon Inspector plays a crucial role by providing automated security evaluations that assist companies in locating and addressing possible vulnerabilities in their cloud infrastructures. Organizations may efficiently improve their security posture with its help because it offers continuous, automated vulnerability detection and proactive advice. Whether compliance, best practices, or just protecting your cloud infrastructure from attacks, Amazon Inspector offers a complete solution.