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Prerequisites
Step 1: Create an S3 bucket
Step 2: Resource Activities report
Step 3: Filter by type
Step 4: Observe activity
Step 5: Enable versioning
Step 6: Observe events
Step 7: Audit resource change
Step 8: Review
Next Steps
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Observe AWS Resource Activity

In this guide you will learn how Guardrails detects and reacts to events in your AWS account. You will manually create and modify an S3 bucket in your accounbt and explore how to view that activity in the Guardrails' console.

This is the third guide in the Getting started with AWS series.

Prerequisites

Completion of the previous guides in this series.
Access to the Guardrails console with administrative privlidges.
Console access to an AWS account and the ability to create and modify S3 buckets.

Note
We will use the bucket name bucket-example-01 in this guide. Bucket names in AWS must be globally unique, so please change the default name for your testing.

Step 1: Create an S3 bucket

After logging into the AWS console, navigate to S3 and select the Create Bucket button.

Give your bucket a name that is easy to remember.

Accept all defaults for the remaining configuration choices and then select the Create Bucket button.

Step 2: Resource Activities report

Select Reports from the top navigation bar. Search for the word "resource" and select Resource Activities.

Step 3: Filter by type

From the filter bar, expand the Resource Type dropdown.

Set the filter to AWS > S3 > Bucket. You can do this by typing aws s3 bucket into the search box, as shown here. When you see AWS > S3 > Bucket appear in the list, select the checkbox next to it.

Step 4: Observe activity

You can scope the resource activity report to a specific bucket by searching for the name of your bucket. To do this, type its name into the search field. Guardrails will show all notifications related to the bucket. In the screen below, the RESOURCE CREATED activity represents Guardrails discovery of the bucket and RESOURCE UPDATED indicates that Guardrails has updated the CMDB entry with additional details about the bucket.

Step 5: Enable versioning

In the AWS console, select the name of your bucket from the list of all buckets. Select the Properties tab and then select the Edit button in the Bucket Versioning section.

In the Versioning dialog box choose Enable, then select Save changes.

Step 6: Observe events

Switch back to the Guardrails console browser tab. Guardrails' event processing system will soon detect the change, and a new RESOURCE UPDATED notification will appear in the list. Select that new notification from the Activities list.

Step 7: Audit resource change

On the notifications detail page, you can see metadata about the change and even audit the changes in configuration between the previous known state and the observed change. Scroll down in the DIFF section to observe the changes that Guardrails has recorded.