No CloudWatch alarm for AWS Management Console authentication failures

Severity: Medium
Service: Monitoring and alarms
Check ID: CLOUDWATCH_ALARM_CONSOLE_AUTH_FAILURES

What this check finds

No metric filter and alarm detect repeated console authentication failures. High failure rates indicate brute-force or credential-stuffing attacks. CIS v1.4 §4.6.

Passing looks like: CloudWatch alarm for console auth failures configured.

How to fix it

Create a metric filter with pattern: {($.eventName = "ConsoleLogin") && ($.errorMessage = "Failed authentication")} and a CloudWatch alarm with a low threshold (e.g. 3 within 5 minutes).

Compliance controls it is evidence for

A failing result counts against these controls in KloudLytics; a passing one is evidence towards them. How compliance mapping works

Compliance controls mapped to No CloudWatch alarm for AWS Management Console authentication failures
Framework	Controls
CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark v5.0.0	4.6 Ensure AWS Management Console authentication failures are monitored
NIST SP 800-53 Rev5 (Moderate)	AC-7 Unsuccessful Logon Attempts AU-6 Audit Record Review, Analysis, and Reporting SI-4 System Monitoring
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0	DE.AE-02 Adverse events are analyzed DE.CM-01 Networks are monitored
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A	A.8.5 Secure authentication A.8.16 Monitoring activities

Checked on every scan

KloudLytics runs this check each time it scans a connected AWS account, through a read-only role, and lists every affected resource with its region. On Pro and Business a fix is written for the specific resource rather than the general case above. The exact access it needs

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