AWS Trusted Advisor Vs AWS Inspector – What is the difference?

AWS, an ever-evolving cloud computing platform, keeps adding new technologies and features to its cloud-based services. AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Inspector serve different purposes for the user.

What is an AWS Trusted Advisor?

AWS Trusted Advisor inspects or checks AWS accounts to provide users with recommendations when opportunities exist to reduce costs, enhance performance and security, track service quotas, and improve system availability. Trusted Advisor uses the following 5 categories to compare a user’s AWS environment with AWS best practices-

• Cost optimization- Trusted Advisor evaluates configuration, use, and expenses to provide users with workable recommendations for saving costs. It helps identify unused EBS volumes, unrelated elastic IP addresses, excessive lambda function timeouts, etc.
• Fault tolerance- Trusted Advisor enhances the credibility of services by analyzing disabled Availability Zones and RDS backups, Auto Scaling EC2 groups, etc.
• Security- Trusted Advisor recommends security best practices put forward by security experts to improve AWS environment security for users. It identifies the access risk of RDS security groups, unprotected access keys, unnecessary S3 bucket permissions, etc.
• Performance- Trusted Advisor assesses usage and configuration to provide users with recommendations for improving service performances. It evaluates EBS delays and output computes usage of EC2 instances, CloudFront configuration, etc.
• Service quotas- Service quota limits resources created in an AWS account. Trusted Advisor notifies and recommends users to delete resources or request an increase once they reach more than 80% of their limit.

What is an AWS Inspector?

AWS Inspector is a vulnerability management tool that automatically analyzes AWS workloads to find accidental network exposure and software vulnerabilities. It provides a detailed list of security issues and recommendations to fix them. AWS Inspector helps users unite their vulnerability management services for Amazon EC2 and ECR into a single managed solution. Users are also provided with an accurate Inspector risk score helping them prioritize their vulnerable resources.

Are you new to AWS cloud? Do you want to learn how to connect to virtual machines in the AWS cloud through networking? Check out our blog on AWS Network Interfaces.

AWS Inspector can be used for the following-:

• Identifying and scanning AWS workloads for vulnerabilities and divergence from security best practices and routing them to suitable teams in real-time for immediate action.
• Prioritizing vulnerable resources with the help of context-based risk scores created by combining updated CVE (common vulnerabilities and exposures) information with network accessibility and other factors.
• Aligning with compliance needs and best practices for PCI DSS, NIST CSF, and other regulations with the help of Amazon Inspector scans.
• Quickly identifying zero-day vulnerabilities by accelerating MTTR, using more than 50 sources for vulnerability intelligence.

AWS Trusted Advisor Vs. AWS Inspector

• Agent- AWS Trusted Advisor is an agent-less administration tool that recommends the best practices for effective resource utilization in the AWS environment. On the contrary, AWS Inspector is an agent-based administration tool that automatically evaluates user workloads for identifying vulnerabilities.

• Operation- AWS Trusted Advisor focuses on fault tolerance, service quotas, cost-effective functioning, security, and performance to help users optimize their AWS resource usage. It applies to AWS accounts and AWS administration. On the other hand, AWS Inspector analyzes the design of AWS EC2 instances by continuously running checks for identifying security problems, vulnerabilities, and framework patches.

Prepare Yourself for Cloud Roles With an AWS Certification

Individuals can assess their ability to perform cloud roles by clearing the CLF-C01: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and earning a certificate. Individuals taking this 90-minute exam must meet the following criteria before appearing for this exam -

• Familiarity with AWS cloud for a minimum of 6 months.
• Understanding of IT services and their usage in the AWS cloud platform.
• Understanding of key AWS services and use cases, pricing models and billings, security aspects, and the impact of cloud on their business.

The exam cost is US $100, and the delivery mode options are Pearson VUE and PSI; testing center or online proctored exam.

Accelerate Professional Growth With NetCom Learning

Individuals can take the help of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course offered by NetCom Learning to clear the CLF-C01: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and get the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certificate. This 8-hour course requires individuals to have basic IT business and technical knowledge. Individuals are provided with different delivery options, including Virtual Instructor-led Training (VILT), Instructor-led Training (ILT), and private group training. The course price is the US $ 675.

NetCom Learning also offers an Introduction to Trusted Advisor course for individuals seeking a better understanding of AWS Trusted Advisor. The course will guide individuals through a case study based on the utilization of the AWS Trusted Advisor service, along with a demonstration.

If your organization is gearing up for cloud migration and you want to upskill your teams for the change, then read our blog on AWS cloud migration to understand why training is important.