Table of contents

Introduction to Conformity Rules

Contents

What rules does Conformity support?

What is the frequency of running the rules?

What rules are run?

New Accounts

Rules configuration

Rule settings

Anatomy of a rule

Check summary

Not scored

Deprecated Rules

Rules supported by Real Time Monitoring

FAQs

What rules does Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Conformity support?

Conformity supports over 540 rules founded on cloud and security governance best practices, and Compliance Standards.

Conformity's rules cover the 6 categories of security and governance best practices:

  1. Security
  2. Cost Optimisation
  3. Operational Excellence
  4. Reliability
  5. Performance Efficiency
  6. Sustainability

Rules are run against your cloud account services, resources, their settings, and configurations.

What is the frequency of running the rules?

Conformity rules are run:

  1. Periodically on your added Accounts by the Conformity Bot, or
  2. In real-time for selected rules, if you have the Real-Time Monitoring subscription turned on for your account.

What rules are run?

Refer to Conformity Knowledge Base for all the rules supported by Conformity.

  • Is there any rule that looks for open access to all ports? Rule: EC2-001 (Security Group Port Range) checks for any range of open ports including all ports.
  • Are all the rules in AWS Config included in Conformity? We support every rule in AWS Config as soon as they become available through config:DescribeConfigRules API

If Conformity doesn't support a rule you need, you have the option to create custom rules using AWS Config Service.

New Accounts

When an account is first added to Conformity, a set of default rules will be run on the account by the Conformity Bot.

Rules configuration

Rules can be configured to better cater to your organisation's circumstances and governance needs. Some rules require configuration before they can be run, and all rules have configuration options including adjusting severity and enabling/disabling.

See Rule Configuration.

Rule settings

There are common rule settings (such as new rule behavior, and rule configurations) that can be managed at the Cloud Accounts level. See Rule settings.

Anatomy of a rule

A Conformity rule is run against an AWS (or other Cloud Provider) or Conformity Service. For example Guard Duty, CloudTrail, Conformity. A full list of services can be found on the Knowledge Base.

Conformity runs Checks for each Rule against the Service and or Service resources, the Rule belongs to. Checks can fail or succeed and are captured by Conformity's numerous reporting tools.

Note: New rules or rules that are updated will be marked accordingly for 10 days after the release.

Check summary

Provides a count for different check statuses. See Model: Check for more info on each status.

Not Scored

Conformity creates checks with the status 'Not Scored' for specific rules. A 'Not Scored' check is an informational marker or notification for when a Failure or Success condition can't be explicitly assessed. They may help you conduct a manual audit of a recommended configuration, or provide partial information about resources in your account.

Possible 'Not Scored' Scenarios

  • Some recommendations are required for certain compliance standards, but may not be practical or possible to assess via a scan of cloud resource metadata. For example, limitations with the API or SDK response from the cloud provider may restrict rule development. In this scenario you may see a single 'Not Scored' check saved to your account checks for the given rule.
  • The recommendation may not be directly applicable to your cloud resource configuration, for example it may relate to an external configuration or internal setting within a resource that is not assessed at the level of the cloud resource metadata.
  • A relevant automated check may only be partially possible, for example if additional contextual information is required to fully determine the Failure or Success condition. In this scenario, you may see a 'Not Scored' check with respect to a particular cloud resource.
  • Informational findings may be ingested and saved as 'Not Scored' checks from certain cloud native services.

For more information see Model Check.

Deprecated Rules

Rules marked for removal by Conformity are identified as Deprecated Rules.

Why are rules marked for deprecation?

A Deprecated Rule has been identified for future removal because the associated recommendation is either no longer valid, has been superseded by another recommendation, or has been incorporated into another rule recommendation.

How do I know a rule is deprecated?

The rule title and associated Knowledge Base page will reflect whether a rule is deprecated. A warning message will display in an account's Rule Settings and in Profile Settings if a rule marked for deprecation has been configured.

What should I do if I have configured deprecated rules in an account?

Deprecated Rules should be left with default settings in place. This is important to avoid disruption on your account for when the rule is later removed.

If a deprecated rule is configured in a Account Rule Settings, to edit via the Dashboard:

  1. Click on the account and navigate to Settings, Rule settings and click Update rule settings
  2. Search for the offending rule and click Configure
  3. In the rule settings window, click Reset to default

What should I do if I have configured deprecated rules in a Profile?

If a deprecated rule is configured in a Profile, to edit via the Dashboard:

  1. Click on the Profile
  2. Search for the offending rule
  3. Click the Reset button to remove any rule settings
  4. When asked to if you are sure you want to remove the rule setting, click Yes, remove it

If you have any Profile JSON files stored elsewhere, remove all the configurations connected to the deprecated rule and follow your normal Profile update processes.

Rule Removal

After a rule has been deprecated for some time, we will remove the rule entirely from the system. To ensure there is no disruption, do not forget to leave the rule in the default state.

Rules supported by Real Time Monitoring

AWS

Service Rules
Backup Backup-001
CloudFormation CFM-001, CFM-002, CFM-004, CFM-005, CFM-006, CFM-007
CloudFront CF-002, CF-003, CF-004, CF-005, CF-006, CF-007, CF-008, CF-009, CF-011
CloudTrail CT-013
Config Config-005
DynamoDB DynamoDB-001, DynamoDB-003, DynamoDB-004, DynamoDB-005
EC2 EC2-001, EC2-002, EC2-003, EC2-004, EC2-005, EC2-006, EC2-007, EC2-008, EC2-014, EC2-015, EC2-016, EC2-017, EC2-020, EC2-021, EC2-022, EC2-023, EC2-024, EC2-025, EC2-026, EC2-027, EC2-028, EC2-029, EC2-030, EC2-031, EC2-032, EC2-033, EC2-034, EC2-035, EC2-036, EC2-038, EC2-039, EC2-040, EC2-041, EC2-042, EC2-043, EC2-044, EC2-045, EC2-046, EC2-047, EC2-053, EC2-055, EC2-056, EC2-058, EC2-059, EC2-061, EC2-063, EC2-064, EC2-065, EC2-066, EC2-069, EC2-070, EC2-071, EC2-072, EC2-073, EC2-074, EC2-075
ECS ECS-001
ELB ELB-001, ELB-002, ELB-003, ELB-004, ELB-005, ELB-006, ELB-007, ELB-008, ELB-009, ELB-010, ELB-011, ELB-012, ELB-013, ELB-014, ELB-015, ELB-016, ELB-017, ELB-018, ELB-021, ELB-022
GuardDuty GD-003
IAM IAM-001, IAM-002, IAM-003, IAM-004, IAM-005, IAM-006, IAM-007, IAM-008, IAM-009, IAM-010, IAM-011, IAM-012, IAM-013, IAM-016, IAM-017, IAM-018, IAM-019, IAM-020, IAM-021, IAM-022, IAM-024, IAM-025, IAM-026, IAM-027, IAM-028, IAM-029, IAM-033, IAM-038, IAM-044, IAM-045, IAM-049, IAM-050, IAM-051, IAM-052, IAM-053, IAM-054, IAM-056, IAM-057, IAM-058, IAM-059, IAM-060, IAM-062, IAM-064, IAM-069, IAM-071, RTM-001, RTM-002, RTM-003, RTM-005, RTM-008, RTM-010
KMS KMS-007
Lambda Lambda-001, Lambda-002, Lambda-003, Lambda-004, Lambda-005, Lambda-006, Lambda-007, Lambda-009
Macie Macie-002
Miscellaneous Misc-001, RTM-011
Organizations Organizations-003
RDS RDS-001, RDS-002, RDS-003, RDS-004, RDS-005, RDS-006, RDS-007, RDS-008, RDS-009, RDS-010, RDS-011, RDS-012, RDS-013, RDS-019, RDS-022, RDS-023, RDS-025, RDS-026, RDS-030, RDS-031, RDS-032, RDS-033, RDS-034, RDS-035, RDS-036, RDS-037, RDS-038, RDS-039, RDS-040, RDS-041, RDS-042
Route53 Route53-009
Route53Domains Route53Domains-001
S3 S3-001, S3-002, S3-003, S3-004, S3-005, S3-006, S3-007, S3-008, S3-009, S3-010, S3-011, S3-012, S3-013, S3-014, S3-015, S3-016, S3-017, S3-018, S3-019, S3-020, S3-021, S3-022, S3-023, S3-024, S3-025, S3-026, S3-028
SecurityHub SecurityHub-001
SSM SSM-003
VPC VPC-001, VPC-004, VPC-005, VPC-006, VPC-010, VPC-011, VPC-012, VPC-013, VPC-014, VPC-015, VPC-016, RTM-009
EKS EKS-001, EKS-003
ECR ECR-003

Azure

Service Rules
Network Network-014
Policy Policy-001
SecurityCenter SecurityCenter-026, SecurityCenter-027
Sql Sql-016

GCP

Service Rules
CloudIAM CloudIAM-014
CloudKMS CloudKMS-003
CloudStorage CloudStorage-004
ComputeEngine ComputeEngine-012
CloudSQL CloudSQL-029
CloudDNS CloudDNS-004
CloudLoadBalancing CloudLoadBalancing-003
GKE GKE-003
ResourceManager ResourceManager-004
CloudPubSub CloudPubSub-001

Conformity

Service Rules
User sign in RTM-004, RTM-006

FAQs

  1. A rule is marked as "New" or "Updated" on Conformity web interface. What does it mean?
    Rules that are updated and new rules are marked as "Updated" and "New" for 10 days after the release. Updates include changes to rule behavior, bug fixes, improvements, new settings, changes to default settings, changes to default risk level, etc.
  2. Why does an AssumeRole action trigger a failure for our blacklisted region rule?
    Sometimes regions get picked up by the browser from the last session. Say the user’s last action was in us east 1. When the user next logs in, the console login may be us east 1 even if user normally logs in to eu west 1.
  3. Is there a rule to check for S3 buckets with static website hosting option turned on? I created a bucket with static website hosting turned on, and it didn't trigger any violations.
    Refer to the link: S3 Buckets with Website Configuration Enabled
  4. How are the AWS Inspector Findings risk levels calculated by Conformity?
    AWS Inspector Findings risk levels are calculated in the following way:
    Inspector.severity = High; Conformity risk level = HIGH
    Inspector.severity = Medium; Conformity risk level = MEDIUM
    Inspector.severity = Low; Conformity risk level = LOW
    Otherwise Conformity risk level = LOW
  5. How are the GuardDuty Findings risk levels calculated by Conformity?
    GuardDuty Findings risk levels are calculated in the following way:
    GuardDuty.level >=7.0; Conformity risk level = HIGH
    GuardDuty.level >=4.0 & GuardDuty.level <=6.9; Conformity risk level = MEDIUM
    Otherwise Conformity risk level = LOW
  6. How are the Macie Alerts risk levels calculated by Conformity?
    Macie Alerts risk levels are calculated in the following way:
    Macie.severity = Critical; Conformity risk level = EXTREME
    Macie.severity = High; Conformity risk level = HIGH
    Macie.severity = Medium; Cloud Conformity risk level = MEDIUM
    Macie.severity = Low; Cloud Conformity risk level = LOW
    Macie.severity = Informational; Cloud Conformity risk level = LOW
  7. Adding several trusted accounts is a very time-consuming process. Is there a better way to do it?
    If you are adding several trusted accounts, you can perhaps use the Conformity API. Trusted accounts are part of Cross Account rules. Example here - https://www.cloudconformity.com/knowledge-base/aws/SQS/sqs-cross-account-access.htmlYou can use update rule setting endpoint - https://github.com/cloudconformity/documentation-api/blob/master/Accounts.md#update-rule-setting
  8. We have experienced some issues with ACM Certificates expiring recently. It is my understanding that Conformity has rules for 7 Days (ACM-002), 30 Days (ACM-003), and 45 days (ACM-004) before expiry. However, when I visit our dashboard and filter by the ACM service I can only see ACM-004. I just wanted to clarify whether Cloud Conformity account is checking for all of the ACM certificate expiry rules. If they are being checked, is it possible for you to explain why am I unable to see them when filtering by ACM?
    Only one of ACM Certificates Renewal rule - 2,3,4 generates a Check at any given time to avoid overlap
    a. ACM-002 Certificate will expire within 7 days
    b. ACM-003 Certificate will expire between 7 and 30 days
    c. ACM-004 Certificate will expire between 30 and 45 days

    The reason for producing one Check out of ACM-002, ACM-003, an ACM-004 at any given time is to avoid overlap and create a reliable conformity score:
    ACM-002 is high risk
    ACM-003 is medium risk
    ACM-004 is low risk
    Between 45 and 30 days you receive a low risk Check; between 30 and 7 days you receive a medium risk Check; and eventually, between 7 days and expiry, you get a high risk Check.
  9. Is there a rule to detect whether CloudTrail is configured to log to S3?
    Yes. CloudTrail Enabled rule detects whether CloudTrail is configured to log to S3. S3BucketName is required for configuring a trail.
  10. Is it possible to check for log ons from users that aren’t whitelisted
    Sign-In Events rule checks Sign-In Events for IAM and Federated Users. Also, the User signed in to AWS from an approved country rule detects a user authentication session from an unapproved country.
  11. Is it possible to detect if an RDS Snapshot is shared publicly?
    Yes. Amazon RDS Public Snapshots rule detects any public RDS snapshots.
  12. Can we export cloudwatch logs from an EC2 instance and generate alerts?
    Conformity doesn’t have access to CloudWatch logs so we cannot generate alerts from of EC2 instances.
  13. Does RTM-004 and RTM-006 run for Cloud One users?
    The rules; RTM-004 (Cloud Conformity user has signed in without MFA) and RTM-006 (Users signed in to Cloud Conformity from an approved country) run for Standalone Conformity only and do not run for Cloud One users.
  14. What do I do to manage the following Rule failures in Sentry?
  15. Lambda-009 - Enable Encryption at Rest for Environment Variables using Customer Managed Keys
  16. SecretsManager-001 - Secret Encrypted With KMS Customer Master KeysEncrypted With KMS Customer Master KeysSecret Encrypted With KMS Customer Master Keys

We've done a thorough security analysis for these two rules and we ensure that the relevant resources are safe as they are encrypted with default keys. The rule failures are introduced by the Sentry resource that you can easily manage using rule exceptions with the resource tag - AppManagerCFNStackKey: C1 Sentry in the following two ways:

  1. Set up Rule Exceptions using the tag
  2. Use Profiles

    2.1. Create a Profile

    2.2. Configure the new Profile with Rule Exceptions.

    2.3. Apply Profile to Account.

    2.4. In the Overwrite window > Select Include Exceptions > Merge Profile with the desired account to apply rule exceptions.

You can also Configure an Organization Profile with the rule exceptions to apply these settings to all accounts in your Organization and override your default rule settings.