How AWS is simplifying security at scale: Four keys to faster innovation from AWS re:Inforce 2025

When I began my career in security, most people accepted as fact that protecting systems came at the expense of productivity. That didn’t have to be true then, and it’s definitely not true now. The cloud, and specifically the AWS Cloud, is a big reason why. But as technology evolves and systems become more complex, operating at scale demands a fresh approach to security. We take our customers’ security seriously, and that means building guardrails that give organizations the confidence to innovate boldly and scale rapidly.

In my new role as AWS CISO, I see this playing out daily. As I meet with customers, their excitement about technologies like generative AI comes hand in hand with questions about securing complex environments and managing new types of risk. They’re excited about innovation, but they need confidence that their security foundations can keep pace with their ambitions. They want to move fast without compromising security.

Today at re:Inforce, I shared how AWS is working backward from these needs to fundamentally transform how security scales in the cloud. It all starts with a security foundation built on four key pillars: identity and access management, data and network security, monitoring and incident response, and the continuous work of migration, modernization, and patching. Organizations with mature security models across these pillars are the ones moving fastest. Across each of these areas, we’re focused on delivering security capabilities that help customers adopt new technologies and experiment with confidence.

Scaling identity for the cloud

As our customers rapidly scale their cloud operations, they’ve told us that managing identity and access across complex environments becomes increasingly challenging. They need solutions that can grow with their business while maintaining strong security. Identity and access management underpins every aspect of cloud security, and success in this area requires both rigorous authentication controls and comprehensive visibility into access permissions.

I was excited to announce new internal access findings for AWS IAM Access Analyzer today. This capability transforms how organizations manage access to sensitive data at scale, addressing the complexities our customers face as they grow. Using automated reasoning technology, it analyzes complex permission layers across diverse policy types, giving security teams comprehensive visibility into who within their organizations has access to what resources. With daily monitoring and notifications of new access granted, we’re helping teams implement least-privilege access with confidence in even the most complex environments. This provides our customers visibility to strengthen access controls on their critical resources while maintaining the agility their business demands as they scale in the cloud.

Empowering transformation through data and network security

Our customers are eager to transform their businesses, but they need confidence that their security can keep pace with rapid innovation. This is especially true when it comes to protecting their networks and data at scale. During the keynote, Noopur Davis, CISO of Comcast, shared how her organization protects their vast network and customer data while enabling rapid innovation. With millions of customers relying on their services, Comcast’s approach resonated with me: security shouldn’t just defend, it should enable transformation.

We’re delivering on this vision with new capabilities that simplify security at scale. Today, I announced that AWS Certificate Manager now allows you to export ACM-issued public certificates and their private keys for use inside or outside of AWS, giving you automated certificate management with the flexibility to help secure your workloads. We’re also expanding AWS Shield with enhanced network and application protection that performs a network security analysis to identify configuration issues and provides remediation recommendations. You can even use AWS generative AI powered assistant Amazon Q Developer to gain actionable insights using simple natural language. These innovations help teams protect their data and stay ahead of evolving threats even as their environments grow more complex.

Elevating threat detection and response

Our customers have shared their challenges in keeping pace with the evolving threat landscape, especially as they scale their cloud operations. While traditional automation helps manage growing complexity, AI represents an even more powerful opportunity to transform security operations. When implemented thoughtfully, AI dramatically improves our ability to spot complex attack patterns, reduce false positives, and automate responses at massive scale.

Today at re:Inforce, I announced two key security innovations: expanded capabilities in Amazon GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection and enhanced AWS Security Hub that directly address these needs. Together, these services help simplify security at scale. GuardDuty uses AWS-trained AI and machine learning (AI/ML) models to detect sophisticated multi-stage threats and provide actionable insights, while Security Hub prioritizes critical security issues by automatically analyzing and correlating security signals into clear, prioritized actions. This approach gives teams the confidence to scale their operations, knowing they can detect and respond to security risks efficiently across their entire AWS environment.

Accelerating the journey to better security

While advanced capabilities like AI and automation help strengthen security operations, the foundation matters most. Moving to the cloud represents a transformative opportunity to build on a fundamentally stronger security foundation than most organizations can ever hope to achieve with on-premises environments. When migrating to AWS, you reduce the need to manage physical infrastructure security while gaining access to built-in protections that are continuously updated and maintained.

Successful cloud adoption means going beyond simple lift-and-shift. Modernization is key to realizing these benefits. By moving solutions further up the stack to use managed services like AWS Lambda, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), or AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), you benefit from security controls that are built in rather than bolted on. These services are continuously patched and maintained by AWS, freeing your teams to focus on innovating for your customers. After all, the fastest path to better security is the one where core protections are already built in.

Partnering for security success

Security transformation isn’t a journey organizations need to take alone. Throughout my career, I’ve seen how the right partnerships can accelerate success, bringing fresh perspectives and deep expertise to complex challenges. Our security partners help customers across the four pillars we discussed today, from implementing identity solutions to modernizing security operations. They understand both the technical complexities and the business realities of scaling security in the cloud, often bringing valuable industry-specific experience that helps organizations move faster with confidence.

Looking ahead

As you scale your operations in the cloud, our goal is to give you the confidence to move quickly while maintaining strong security controls. When security scales naturally with your business, teams can focus on building what’s next instead of managing infrastructure.

To dive deeper into how AWS designs, builds, and operates security at unprecedented scale, I encourage you to join our Innovation Talks at re:Inforce. These hour-long sessions explore the key pillars of modern cloud security: secure foundations, resilient architectures, AI-powered innovations, and large-scale threat intelligence.

As I step into my role as AWS CISO, I’m energized by the opportunity ahead. For nearly 20 years, AWS has maintained a unique culture of security that enables us to innovate rapidly while shipping securely. As we navigate the landscape of generative AI and rapid technological change, earning your trust means not just keeping pace with innovation, but helping to make it even more successful. I couldn’t be more excited to carry this mission forward.

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