Glossary
CIS Benchmark
Compliance & GovernanceThe CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark is a set of security configuration best practices published by the Center for Internet Security. It provides a prescriptive checklist covering IAM, logging, monitoring, networking, and storage security.
Versions
- v6.0: latest version (2025)
- v5.0: latest version supported by Security Hub automated checks (also supports v3.0, v1.4, v1.2)
Key Control Areas
- IAM - password policies, MFA, access key rotation, root account lockdown
- Logging - CloudTrail enabled in all regions, log file validation, S3 access logging
- Monitoring - CloudWatch alarms for unauthorized API calls, console sign-in without MFA
- Networking - restrict default security groups, enable VPC Flow Logs
Related AWS Services
Related Terms
Compliance
Meeting regulatory requirements and industry standards (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, CIS) for data protection, access control, and security practices in the cloud.
Security Hub
AWS service that aggregates security findings from GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, and third-party tools into a single dashboard with compliance scoring.
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