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Why Choose This Project?

With organizations increasingly moving workloads to the cloud, monitoring for suspicious activities, misconfigurations, and compliance violations is critical. Native services like AWS CloudTrail provide logs, but they can be overwhelming without centralized visualization and analysis.

This project builds a custom cloud security monitoring platform by integrating AWS CloudTrail logs into the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for real-time analysis, detection, and alerting. It gives hands-on experience in SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), log management, and cloud security automation.

What You Get

Centralized log collection from AWS services (CloudTrail, CloudWatch)
Security dashboards with real-time visualization in Kibana
Detection of suspicious login attempts, privilege escalation, and unauthorized API calls
Custom alerts for anomalies (e.g., root account usage, disabled MFA)
Scalable log storage in Elasticsearch
Enhanced visibility into cloud activity for auditing and compliance

Key Features

Feature	Description
CloudTrail Integration	Collect all AWS account activity logs
Centralized Log Analysis	Send logs to Elasticsearch via Logstash/Beats
Real-Time Security Alerts	Detect anomalies like unauthorized access or API misuse
Pre-Built Dashboards	Visualize login activity, resource changes, and network activity
Compliance Monitoring	Ensure adherence to security policies (e.g., CIS, GDPR, HIPAA)
Threat Detection Rules	Identify brute-force login attempts or IAM misconfigurations
Scalable Storage	Store logs securely for long-term auditing
Incident Response	Security team receives alerts via email/SMS/Slack

Technology Stack

Layer	Tools/Technologies
Log Collection	AWS CloudTrail, AWS CloudWatch, Filebeat
Data Pipeline	Logstash, Kafka (optional for buffering)
Log Storage & Search	Elasticsearch
Visualization	Kibana dashboards
Alerting	ElastAlert / Kibana Watcher / AWS SNS
Security Rules Engine	Open Distro for Elasticsearch (alerting plugin)
Cloud Security	IAM policies, VPC flow logs, KMS for encryption
Monitoring	AWS GuardDuty (optional), CloudWatch metrics

Cloud Services Used

Service	Purpose
AWS CloudTrail	Track API calls, user activity, and events
CloudWatch Logs	Collect and forward logs for processing
S3	Store CloudTrail logs for backup and archiving
IAM	Define secure access policies for monitoring pipeline
SNS / SES	Send alerts to administrators (SMS, Email)
KMS	Encrypt logs for security
VPC Flow Logs	Monitor network traffic for suspicious patterns

Working Flow

CloudTrail Logging
- AWS CloudTrail records all API calls, login events, and security-relevant activities.
Log Ingestion
- Logs are stored in S3 or forwarded to CloudWatch Logs.
- Filebeat/Logstash pulls logs and sends them to Elasticsearch.
Data Processing
- Logstash parses JSON logs, enriches with metadata, and indexes them in Elasticsearch.
Visualization in Kibana
- Dashboards display metrics like failed logins, unusual regions, IAM policy changes, etc.
Alerting & Security Rules
- Alerts are triggered if suspicious activity is detected (e.g., use of root account, multiple failed logins).
Response & Investigation
- Security team investigates flagged incidents using Kibana dashboards and Elasticsearch queries.
Scaling & Compliance
- Elastic cluster scales to handle increased log volume.
- Long-term logs stored in S3 for compliance requirements.