AWS GuardDuty Reviews

It's a malware detection service. It's an intelligent malware and security event detection service from AWS.

The out-of-band malware detection from the EBS volumes. It's really cool. No agents or anything needed, it automatically finds and correlates based on malware.

Cost changes. It's very expensive. If you turn on every feature, it's more than most commercial vendors. For smaller orgs, that doesn't make sense.

I have been using it for two years now. It is an offering in the AWS. 

It is a stable product. 

My company have five to six admins using this solution. 

The initial setup was easy. It was a one-click deployment.

For smaller organizations, it is not expensive. 

If you have a large organization or already have similar tools, it might not be necessary. But for most, GuardDuty is the go-to.

For me, I still use GuardDuty. I see a lot of good correlations built up by AWS support.

Don't add all the features at once. Go step-by-step, or you'll end up with a very high cost and turn off the system.

It can get very expensive. If you turn on every feature, it can turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use AWS GuardDuty in our company to safeguard our deployment production.

One of the valuable features of the product is the protection of S3 data events, for which, if we use Lacework, then we have to turn it into CloudTrail and feed all the logs to Lacework, which are some steps done by default by AWS GuardDuty. Maybe I can take a step back since, in general, the ability of GuardDuty to natively look at AWS logs or functions and then give protection is something that we think is better than many others.

We currently find Lacework to be much better at detecting vulnerabilities than AWS GuardDuty. The engines of AWS GuardDuty have to be improved.

I have been using AWS GuardDuty for six months to a year. My company is a customer of the solution.

It's a pretty stable tool. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten. I haven't seen it go down yet.

It is a highly scalable solution since it is a service by AWS. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

In my department, three to four people use the solution.

We haven't used the support often, so I don't have an opinion.

Our company uses Lacework and AWS GuardDuty, and we conducted a comparison to decommission one of the aforementioned products.

Looking at Lacework might be helpful since it provides many other protections or functionalities we have seen lacking in AWS GuardDuty.

The initial setup of the solution was pretty simple.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price, I rate the pricing a four or five, which is somewhere in the middle. I provided the rating for AWS GuardDutya as four or five out of ten because the pricing would have seemed pretty good if it had more functionalities. Right now, the protection engine isn't that perfect in AWS GuardDuty.

Considering our evaluation process, we think its Lacework is better because of the protection engine it provides.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Our primary use case was to monitor our assets and workloads for abnormal activity.

It kinda just gives us another layer of security. So it does provide some sort of comfort that we do have something that is monitoring for abnormal behavior. 

So it's different from just looking for known signatures. It looks at behaviors in the environment. So it's kinda like an alternative security vector, plus.

For me, the most valuable feature is the behavior analysis. It looks at security from a different perspective.

For me, I would say just the presentation of findings, like the dashboards and other stuff, could be improved a bit. So, the presentation of findings could be improved a bit.  

I have been using this solution for a year. 

I have never faced any issues. So, I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We have seen an ROI. It has helped with some things.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Most of the time, Amazon GuardDuty is used to collect additional network login requirements, so it's basically in the compliance setting, particularly if you need to collect additional logs, or you need additional protection for your infrastructure in the cloud. Those are the areas where you can utilize Amazon GuardDuty and have it assist with compliance, as it's one of the authorized services for compliance, and it's more than likely the tool to use. For the most part, my organization uses the solution for additional protection within the cloud and also to assist with any additional login capabilities that you can't get through the other services. Amazon GuardDuty fills those gaps and helps facilitate a lot of gaps that you have.

What I like most about Amazon GuardDuty is that you can monitor your AWS accounts across, but you don't have to pay the additional cost. You can get all your CloudTrail VPC flow logs and DNS logs all in one, and then you get the monitoring with that. A lot of times, if you had a separate tool on-premise, you would have to set up your DNS logs, so usually, Amazon GuardDuty helps with all your additional networking requirements, so I utilize it for continuous monitoring because you can't detect anything if you're not monitoring, and the solution fills that gap. If you don't do anything else first, you can deploy your firewall, and then you've got your Route 53 DNS and DNSSEC, but then Amazon GuardDuty fills that, and then you have audit requirements in AU that says, "Hey, what are your additional logs?", so you can just say, "Hey, we utilize Amazon GuardDuty." You're getting your CloudTrail, your VPC flow logs, and all your DNS logs, and those are your additional logs right there, so the solution meets a lot of requirements. Now, everything comes with a cost, but I also like that the solution also provides threat response and remediation. It's a pretty good product. I've just used it more for log analysis and that's where the value is at, the niche value. Once you do threat detection, it goes into a lot of other integrations you need to implement, so threat detection is only good as the integration, as the user that knows the tools itself, and the architecture and how it's all set up and the rules that you set within that.

Improvement-wise, Amazon GuardDuty should have an overall dashboard analytics function so we could see what's in the current environment, and then in addition to that, provide best practices and recommendations, particularly to provide some type of observability, and then figure out the login side of it, based on our current environment, in terms of what we're not monitoring and what we should monitor. The solution should also give us a sample code configuration to implement that added feature or feature request.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Amazon GuardDuty are more security analytics, reporting, and monitoring. They should provide recommendations and additional options that answer questions such as "Hey, what can we see in our environment?", "What should we implement within the environment?", What's recommended?"

We know that cost will always be associated with that, but Amazon GuardDuty should show us the increased costs or decreased costs if we implement it or don't implement it, and that would be a good feature request, particularly with all products within AWS, just for cloud products in general because there are times features are implemented, but once they're deployed, they don't tell you about costs that would be generated along with those features. After features are deployed, there should a summary of the costs that would be generated, and projected based on current usage, so they would give us the option to figure out how long we're going to use those features and the option to keep those on or turn those off. If more services were like that, a lot more people would use those on the cloud.

I've used Amazon GuardDuty for a year, and I've used it with other organizations as well.

Amazon GuardDuty has wonderful stability. My organization is currently using it in the production environment and it works really well. A lot of companies I know are using it, and I've been a third-party assessor before, and the companies I know implement the solution along with Cloud Trail and CloudWatch to get that observability, and then if you decide to do threat response and you want to tag an MSSP provider, all you have to do is link into Amazon GuardDuty, and that's it, you're done. The solution has its pros and cons.

Amazon GuardDuty is a scalable solution. My organization didn't have a problem with adding users. What's been challenging is doing it through infrastructure as code, but just regular added users should be straightforward and easy to do.

I haven't had to use technical support for Amazon GuardDuty yet. Maybe somebody else used it for integration help, for example, to just try to make another integration work with it, but that's about it. A lot of times it would be "Hey, I don't understand that portion of the integration", so you've got to contact support and the code was messed up because a lot of times, in one development or one product, if the codebase is changed and it's not connecting, it could be a coding issue. Eighty percent of the time, you're changing a code issue in a pipeline, a code data integration, or an issue with the API. Most of the time that's the issue.

My organization decided to go with Amazon GuardDuty because most of the infrastructure resides in AWS, so it was just a lot easier for compliance purposes to go with that to get the additional observability for the additional logs that are required.

How easy the initial setup for Amazon GuardDuty all depends on the architecture. If you're deploying this right out of the box, it's easy. A lot of times you want to implement your firewalls and more complex requirements going forward and it just depends on where you set it up in your architecture. It could be more complex if you're dealing with certain requirements, but more than likely, it's self-explanatory. Sometimes, depending on the integrations you're using with the solution, the integrations can be always complex because you're trying to implement Amazon GuardDuty logs to Qualys, for example. The complexities occur during integration and that's usually true for most products.

I had to implement Amazon GuardDuty with Qualys, and the integration was painful because Qualys didn't accept it, but Amazon was right for it, but then the other provider makes it more challenging. Utilizing and using infrastructure as code is a whole challenge itself as well, so if you do it just regular based, you'll think you're okay, and my current organization has that problem because my organization wants to implement infrastructure as code and that's great, but if you see that you're having problems with the modules, then you shouldn't use infrastructure as code, but if that's what my organization wants to do, I just let the DevOps team deal with that. As long as the solution is deployed and I can get observability of the environment, that's all that matters to me.

I don't have all the details in terms of licensing for Amazon GuardDuty, but my organization does have a license set up for it.

I use the latest and greatest version of Amazon GuardDuty that's available on the market.

The number of users of Amazon GuardDuty in my organization is between one to ten. Per my boss, it's a maximum of ten.

My advice to someone who wants to use the solution for the first time is that you've got to establish your use case. What are you going to use it for? Focus on that area, and then I would also implement a proof of concept to make sure that it's set up in your staging environment where you can do all your testing and get all your test results. Depending on what you can implement, make sure your integrations work, and the other tools you have you should also integrate with Amazon GuardDuty in your testing, so when you go to production with it, you would understand the ROI for using the tool.

A lot of times, you always want to have a centralized view of everything in your environment. What you don't want is when you have to go to this tool and then go to that tool, and it's just so much. You already have to do MFA just to get into it, and then once you're in, you'd want to see your whole environment and just get all your touchpoints, so integration is the key component to test within Amazon GuardDuty.

I would rate Amazon GuardDuty seven out of ten because some of the integrations may not work well with it, and depending on the integration that you're working with, the security tools have a lot of requirements to implement. Integration support should be a little bit easier, and it just depends on whether you're doing infrastructure as code versus doing just regular batch scripting, or a formation template. The solution has pros and cons.

My organization is a customer of Amazon GuardDuty.

I use AWS GuardDuty to monitor my AWS environment for potential security threats. It analyzes data from various sources like CloudTrail logs and VPC Flow Logs to detect malicious activity. GuardDuty provides insights into potential threats, categorizing them by severity levels, helping me prioritize and respond effectively. 

As I explore AWS GuardDuty, I find its features helpful for spotting threats in my AWS setup. With anomaly detection, active threat monitoring, and set correlation, GuardDuty alerts me to any unusual user behavior or traffic patterns right away, which is great for staying on top of potential security risks. While I'm still new to using it and haven't faced many threats yet, I see how GuardDuty is crucial for beefing up my AWS security by catching and dealing with vulnerabilities early on.

One improvement I would suggest for AWS GuardDuty is the ability to assign findings to specific users or groups, facilitating better communication and follow-up actions. It would be beneficial to have a knowledge bank where past findings and actions taken are stored, aiding in handling repeat incidents and providing historical precedence for new team members.

I have been using AWS GuardDuty for a year.

AWS GuardDuty is stable and responsive. I haven't encountered any glitches or stability issues, and the analytics are quick and reliable.

As a very small business in its initial stage, I find AWS GuardDuty to be scalable for our needs.

The tech support for AWS GuardDuty is good. The documentation and support resources available are clear and comprehensive, making it easy to set up and configure. I would rate it around nine out of ten.

Positive

GuardDuty is intuitive to use and the setup process is simple. There is not much complex configuration involved, which makes it easy to get started. Deploying AWS GuardDuty is straightforward with just a few steps, and it is all done within your AWS cloud account. As for maintenance, it is easy and there haven't been any issues or challenges.

The pricing and licensing for AWS GuardDuty are transparent and predictable, which I appreciate. While some may find it expensive at larger scales, for our small business, it is manageable and in line with expectations. AWS's pay-as-you-go model ensures we only pay for what we use, which is beneficial for budgeting.

GuardDuty helps by flagging unexpected or potentially unauthorized activity in my AWS environment. For instance, it alerts me when there is an API call from an unfamiliar IP address, which might indicate a security threat. However, in some cases, these alerts might be triggered by legitimate actions, such as employees working remotely from different locations using VPNs.

I find the anomaly detection and continuous monitoring features of AWS GuardDuty very effective. They give me peace of mind knowing that AWS is actively looking out for any abnormal behavior or traffic in my environment. In the past, for on-premises setups, I relied on different network tools for this, but in the cloud, GuardDuty takes care of it, sparing me from manual tasks like checking VPC logs. 

Integrating AWS GuardDuty with third-party tools seems straightforward, although I haven't done it yet myself. From what I have seen, getting GuardDuty data into AWS Security Hub appears to be a simple process, allowing for centralized security monitoring across multiple accounts. I'm considering enabling it and trying it out, especially since AWS offers a 30-day trial for Security Hub.

Overall, I would rate AWS GuardDuty as a ten out of ten.

AWS GuardDuty is a monitoring solution. The product helps us in threat monitoring. It notifies us of illegitimate users or any other cyber attack scenarios.

The solution is easy to use. It is very tightly integrated. The insights provided by the tool are very informative. It is easy to work on the alerts created by the tool. It gives us more details on different scenarios. The product is doing well compared to other solutions.

It would be great if the solution had some automation capabilities. It should provide auto-remediation and threat handling with automation.

I have been using the solution since 2019.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability an eight out of ten. The product is scalable, but it needs a manual intervention. More than 100 people are using the solution in our organization.

The support is always great. The support team is pretty quick. Once we raise a concern, the team jumps into a call and resolves the issues. It hardly takes 15 to 20 minutes.

The initial setup is very simple.

We deployed the solution ourselves. We do not need help from a third-party vendor.

I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution is exactly right. It is neither high nor low. It is a pay-as-you-go model. The more number of accounts we integrate, the more the price will increase.

The product is unique to AWS. I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

GuardDuty is predominantly used to find anomalies, particularly security anomalies when trying to probe a hosted public cloud service. For example, we work with Zuora, and have many public services running at AWS, and our concern is external parties. So, if a hacker or an attacker tries to probe our systems, Amazon GuardDuty tries to find anomalies or any vulnerabilities within our systems.

GuardDuty takes multiple sources of logs. In AWS, we have several logging services like AWS CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs. VPC Flow Logs involve incoming and outgoing traffic from the internet, so if someone tries to get into a system or access one of our publicly hosted AWS, we are able to get that traffic via VPC Flow Logs. AWS CloudTrail is within the public cloud infrastructure, and AWS-specific API calls are involved. So, if someone tries to do some API activity specific to AWS within the infrastructure, this will be a source. These are multiple sources of logs that Amazon GuardDuty consumes as input to analyze the traffic for any security anomalies. So, based on these sources, the solution helps us report findings if security anomalies occur in our systems from the internet or within the cloud infra, cloud account, or AWS account.

AWS is account-specific, and last year, I believe AWS included something related to Kubernetes monitoring or Kubernetes Logs. So if we use EKS within the Kubernetes service and an anomaly occurs, some anomaly traffic is seen in the Kubernetes cluster, and it will be able to identify. That is a good feature they recently added in testable APIs.

Amazon GuardDuty could be better enriched in threat intelligence data. An internal AWS threat intelligence team works 24 hours to enrich customers. That service could be leveraged if there is any new attack, new security vulnerability, or exploitation. Day-to-day hackers find new vulnerabilities, so Amazon GuardDuty should be up to date and help customers find issues.

Kubernetes Logs was missing but is now included. The solution covers most incoming sources in an S3 bucket, storage level, public internet traffic, the cloud infrastructure, the AWS account, and multiple accounts in Kubernetes. So there aren't any missing pieces with Amazon GuardDuty, especially from a monitoring perspective.

Another valuable feature is the delegation service. Even if there are hundreds of accounts, some part of the account is for security, some for DevOps, and some for developers. Certain accounts are assigned within AWS. For example, for Amazon GuardDuty, a master account of the administrator assigns Amazon GuardDuty's administration and full access to our secure account. Once the delegation is done, we work with the tool, the findings, and what it reports to then validate the findings. So, in this situation case, AWS has efficient features.

We have been using this solution for three years. 

It is a stable solution, especially if you compare it to Azure or GCP, so we don't have any complaints about the stability. Other solutions have similar features, but we don't know how enriched those features are.

We have around five people on the security team, and it is very small. However, for large companies like Google or Microsoft that invest a large number of resources, they may have about 50 to 75 people on their team.

Another useful feature is the ability for Amazon GuardDuty to manage hundreds of accounts. There is usually a master account, and the remaining 99 accounts are member accounts. So if you push an order via the master account everything takes place in those 99 member accounts. Most companies don't want to give people access to the master account even to their operations, DevOps, infrastructure or development teams.

With Amazon GuardDuty, most of the tools have a delegation feature. So, from the master account, the administrator can delegate administrator access to a security account. So on our security team, we have our account in AWS, which is part of the master account. Under the master account, the administrator will give us access as a delegated administrator. Once the administrator delegates the security account, our five people team takes care of all the tasks around the solution. 

We have full access to configuring, monitoring and automation. The administrator can delegate the DevOps tool or service and the AWS office to the DevOps team account. So the DevOps team can take care of building automation, managing, and administering that particular service around the DevOps service. So, in this case, Amazon GuardDuty is delegated to our security account, and we manage it completely.

Scalability is good. Companies will usually run across multiple accounts in AWS, and their resources run about a hundred accounts. However, one of the past companies I absolved ran close to a thousand accounts, and in that situation, the Amazon GuardDuty scalability factor was important. 

Also, suppose a company is not leveraging AWS Organization which is very rare, AWS still provides risk APIs or their SD case, where a developer can write a script or automation to deploy seamlessly within a short time. Our security team predominantly uses Amazon GuardDuty. The cybersecurity team monitors the anomalies that occur using Amazon GuardDuty.

The technical support is great. I've contacted AWS support multiple times, and they've resolved the query. They have three technical support features, namely chat support, phone support, and web support, where we can raise a query, and they reply to us. Most of the time, we leverage the phone call feature, and once we input our concerns for the queries, they'll reach out to us over the phone and share a chime link screen sharing service. They try to understand our problems and the areas of concern and provide a solution.

The only concern is that it takes some time to assign someone when we reach out for technical support via phone service. It takes at least 45 minutes to get connected, and time is spent on hold waiting for someone to join from AWS.

Deployment does not take long if it is an account-specific or AWS organization level. My company has around a hundred AWS accounts, so deploying across a hundred AWS accounts was pretty easy. AWS also provides AWS Organization, where one account acts as a master, and the rest of the 19 accounts are member accounts under this master. So once you give an order to the master, you can invoke Amazon GuardDuty across all the accounts. So deployment is great, and we didn't face any big challenges.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. Amazon GuardDuty is a very good service, and we are not planning to change it any time soon.

Regarding advice, it would be good to have data events for Amazon GuardDuty and Kubernetes for monitoring. Data events mean you have an S3 bucket for storing objects or files, and if someone tries to access or monitor those files, API calls will occur, and those transactions will be monitored. So until you enable the data event feature within the Amazon GuardDuty, if someone makes a call at the object or file level, it is something we might miss. Also, there are certain features that are not enabled by default on Amazon GuardDuty.

We use the tool for threat detection. AWS includes AI features as well. AWS GuardDuty gives us reports. 

AWS GuardDuty needs to be more customer-oriented. 

I have been working with the tool for three years. 

The tool is stable. 

AWS GuardDuty is scalable. We used the tool bi-weekly. 

I have not contacted customer support yet. 

The tool's setup is easy. You don't need any additional learning or resources to do it. You just need to enable AWS GuardDuty. The tool's deployment got completed in two to three minutes. 

The tool has no subscription charges. 

AWS GuardDuty is automated and gives alerts whenever there is an intrusion. AWS has a SMS service and you can get notifications through it if you subscribe. We have not encountered any performance issues. I would rate the tool a nine out of ten.