Prowler for Beginners: Audit an AWS Account for Misconfigurations

Most cloud breaches come from settings, not from clever exploits: a public storage bucket, an unused admin key, logging switched off. Prowler is a free open-source tool that checks a cloud account against security best practices. Use it on a free-tier AWS account you own, never on an account you do not have permission to audit. Read the shared responsibility model first.

Create Read-Only Access

• In your own AWS account, create a user or role for the audit.
• Attach the AWS managed policies SecurityAudit and ViewOnlyAccess. They allow reading configuration but not changing it.
• Turn on multi-factor authentication for it, and set a billing alert on the account.

Install and Run

• pip3 install prowler, or use the project's Docker image.
• Configure credentials with the AWS CLI: aws configure.
• prowler aws runs the checks against your default profile.
• prowler aws --severity critical high focuses on the most serious findings.
• prowler -h shows output formats and other options for your installed version.

Read the Findings

Each finding names the check, the affected resource and its status: pass or fail. Start with critical and high failures. Typical ones: no multi-factor authentication on the root account, storage open to the public, no logging trail, wide-open security groups.

Turn It into a Fix List

• Group findings by owner (identity, storage, network, logging).
• For each, write the risk in one sentence and the fix in one sentence.
• Fix one, rerun Prowler, and confirm the failure is gone.

Where It Fits

Cloud configuration review matches the platform, data and operations modules of EC-Council's CCSE; see the CCSE exam guide. Web and API testing, which cloud applications also need, is in our Application Security course.

Sources and Further Reading

• Prowler documentation