Security Hub controls for Amazon Private CA - Amazon Security Hub
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Security Hub controls for Amazon Private CA

These Amazon Security Hub controls evaluate the Amazon Private Certificate Authority (Amazon Private CA) service and resources.

These controls may not be available in all Amazon Web Services Regions. For more information, see Availability of controls by Region.

[PCA.1] Amazon Private CA root certificate authority should be disabled

Related requirements: NIST.800-53.r5 CA-9(1), NIST.800-53.r5 CM-2

Category: Protect > Secure network configuration

Severity: Low

Resource type: AWS::ACMPCA::CertificateAuthority

Amazon Config rule: acm-pca-root-ca-disabled

Schedule type: Periodic

Parameters: None

This control checks if Amazon Private CA has a root certificate authority (CA) that is disabled. The control fails if the root CA is enabled.

With Amazon Private CA, you can create a CA hierarchy that includes a root CA and subordinate CAs. You should minimize the use of the root CA for daily tasks, especially in production environments. The root CA should only be used to issue certificates for intermediate CAs. This allows the root CA to be stored out of harm's way while the intermediate CAs perform the daily task of issuing end-entity certificates.

Remediation

To disable the root CA, see Update CA status in the Amazon Private Certificate Authority User Guide.

[PCA.2] Amazon Private CA certificate authorities should be tagged

Category: Identify > Inventory > Tagging

Severity: Low

Resource type: AWS::ACMPCA::CertificateAuthority

Amazon Config rule: acmpca-certificate-authority-tagged

Schedule type: Change triggered

Parameters:

Parameter Description Type Allowed custom values Security Hub default value
requiredKeyTags List of non-system tag keys that the evaluated resource must contain. Tag keys are case sensitive. StringList (maximum of 6 items) 1–6 tag keys that meet Amazon requirements. No default value

This control checks whether an Amazon Private CA certificate authority has tags with the specific keys defined in the parameter requiredKeyTags. The control fails if the certificate authority doesn’t have any tag keys or if it doesn’t have all the keys specified in the parameter requiredKeyTags. If the parameter requiredKeyTags isn't provided, the control only checks for the existence of a tag key and fails if the certificate authority isn't tagged with any key. System tags, which are automatically applied and begin with aws:, are ignored.

A tag is a label that you assign to an Amazon resource, and it consists of a key and an optional value. You can create tags to categorize resources by purpose, owner, environment, or other criteria. Tags can help you identify, organize, search for, and filter resources. Tagging also helps you track accountable resource owners for actions and notifications. When you use tagging, you can implement attribute-based access control (ABAC) as an authorization strategy, which defines permissions based on tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities (users or roles) and to Amazon resources. You can create a single ABAC policy or a separate set of policies for your IAM principals. You can design these ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the resource tag. For more information, see Define permissions based on attributes with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide.

Note

Don’t add personally identifiable information (PII) or other confidential or sensitive information in tags. Tags are accessible to many Amazon Web Services services, including Amazon Billing. For more tagging best practices, see Best practices and strategies in the Tagging Amazon Resources and Tag Editor User Guide.

Remediation

To add tags to an Amazon Private CA authority, see Add tags for your private CA in the Amazon Private Certificate Authority User Guide.