How can an AWS user conduct security assessments of Amazon EC2 instances, NAT gateways, and Elastic Load Balancers in a way that is approved by AWS?

Amazon Inspector is an AWS-native automated vulnerability management service designed to continually scan AWS workloads, including Amazon EC2 instances, for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. It provides a detailed list of findings prioritized by severity, helping users improve the security and compliance of their applications. Using an AWS-managed service like Inspector is an inherently approved method for conducting security assessments on the specified resources.

A. Flooding a target with requests describes a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, which is a prohibited activity under the AWS Acceptable Use Policy and is not a security assessment.

C. While AWS permits penetration testing, it is subject to specific policies and may require coordination. Amazon Inspector is the specific AWS service designed for automated, continuous vulnerability assessment.

D. The AWS Service Health Dashboard provides information on the operational status of AWS services, not security assessments of a customer's individual resources.

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1. Amazon Inspector Documentation: "Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability management service that continually scans AWS workloads for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. Amazon Inspector automatically discovers and scans running Amazon EC2 instances..."

Source: AWS Documentation

"What is Amazon Inspector?"

Section: "Amazon Inspector overview".

2. AWS Penetration Testing Policy: "The following activities are prohibited: ... Denial of Service (DoS)

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)

Simulated DoS

Simulated DDoS". This confirms that flooding a target (Option A) is not an approved testing method.

Source: AWS Customer Support

"Penetration Testing"

Section: "Permitted services".

3. AWS Health Dashboard Documentation: "AWS Health provides ongoing visibility into your resource performance and the availability of your AWS services and accounts. The AWS Health Dashboard provides a personalized view of the health of the AWS services that power your applications." This clarifies that its purpose is service health monitoring

not security assessment (Option D).

Source: AWS Documentation

"What is AWS Health?"

Section: "AWS Health Dashboard".