AWS December 2023: These are the new functions

Traditionally, it is quiet in the clouds around Christmas and the turn of the year. The AWS December 2023 updates were therefore released a few days ago. Nevertheless, we don't want to withhold the new features implemented by AWS December 2023 from you. Among other things, there are security controls and data access for everyone.

Cross-company data sharing in AWS December 2023

AWS Data Exchange has a new function that allows users to grant other users temporary or permanent access to data. This makes it easy to move data back and forth between accounts. The data is read-only. The recipients can therefore only view the data, but not edit it.

The provisioning types for data transfer in AWS Data Exchange are:

- Data Files

- Amazon S3

- Amazon Redshift

- Amazon API Gateway

- AWS Lake Formation

The latter is still in a preview version.

The data can be shared between all regions in which AWS Data Exchange is available. In December 2023, these include regions in the USA, Asia, Europe and Australia.

Data access via Amazon Athena

Amazon Athena should also be mentioned in this context. In the December 2023 updates for AWS, Athena was also given a new function for shared data access. With AWS IAM Identity Center, data can be shared via Amazon Athena based on user identity.

The administrators enable access for trusted identities via AWS Lake Formation and can track who is accessing the data at any time. There is a choice of groups or individual sets of users. This is particularly helpful when creating working groups for projects. The application also provides data for analysis such as access and other insights.

Amazon Athena is also available in large parts of the USA, Asia and Europe. AWS also made identity-based data access available across regions in December 2023. It is therefore possible to create groups with users from branches in different regions and grant them data access.

New security controls in AWS December 2023

The controls in AWS Security Hub have been increased to a total of 307. AWS Security Hub supports Amazon FSx and AWS Private Certificate Authority, among others, to ensure greater security for users.

In addition, AWS also announced in December 2023 that there are new controls for the Amazon Elastic Cloud, Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service.

The new security controls in AWS Security Hub should be the new standard. If nothing is changed in the default settings, all security controls are active.

The application evaluates the security situation on request and independently monitors the resources for the security checks. Users can perform the security check directly for all linked accounts and regions via a central configuration setting.

Working safely with AWS through skill it

In our seminars, we show you how to use AWS in a secure environment. AWS Security Hub is also used for this. In the three-day course Security Engineering on AWS you will learn how to work securely with data and systems in Amazon Web Services through practical exercises.

If you prefer things to be short and sweet, you can take our training course AWS Security Best Practices to see the best practices for security in AWS and learn how to implement them through hands-on practice.