Amazon Web Services is one of the most well-protected online properties in existence, with a security record clean enough even for the CIA. But that safety doesn’t extend much beyond the core infrastructure, leaving individual deployments no less vulnerable to configuration flaws than than any other environment. That’s a hole that partner Alert Logic Inc. now hopes to plug.

The company is rolling out a security service that promises to automate much of the legwork currently involved in finding misconfigurations on AWS. Alert Logic Cloud Insight is hardly the first to tool to try and tackle operator-induced security problems on the platform, with Amazon Inc. itself having launched a native configuration engine earlier this year, but is one the most comprehensive yet.

That is owed to a built-in database of some 70,000 operational vulnerabilities used as a reference to find potential loopholes in a deployment. The service displays positive hits in a checklist organized based on importance to try and help administrators use their limited time more effectively. It’s a small but potentially important feature that can go a long way towards improving productivity in large environments.

The focus on automation also extends to the third major selling point of Alert Logic’s new service, which is integration with Amazon’s CloudTrail change logger. That enables the scanner to tell when new resources are added or existing components are modified in an environment and recheck for issues without requiring any manual input.

With change being an inevitable part of any IT environment, that can prove an invaluable convenience for administrators who would otherwise need to carry out the entire process by hand after every update. But much more importantly, automating the discovery process also actively contributes to security, since software doesn’t run the risk of human error.

Photo via Geralt