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Backup Retention Duration Should Be Present

More Info:​

As an organization you should have a backup policy with at least minimum 7 days.

Risk Level​

Medium

Address​

Operational Maturity, Reliability, Security

Compliance Standards​

  • APRA CPS 234 (Australia)
  • BSI C5 (Germany)
  • Brazil LGPD
  • CCPA / CPRA (California)
  • CIS Critical Security Controls v8
  • CMMC 2.0
  • CSA Cloud Controls Matrix v4
  • DPDPA
  • Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU)
  • Essential 8
  • GDPR
  • ISO/IEC 27017
  • ISO/IEC 27018
  • ISO/IEC 27701
  • KSA PDPL
  • MAS Technology Risk Management (Singapore)
  • MITRE ATT&CK (Cloud)
  • NIS2 Directive
  • NIST SP 800-171
  • NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500
  • SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework
  • Sarbanes-Oxley IT General Controls
  • UK NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework

Triage and Remediation​

Remediation​

Using Console

To remediate the backup retention duration misconfiguration for an AWS RDS instance using the AWS Management Console, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console:

  2. Navigate to the RDS Console:

    • In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the Amazon RDS console by clicking on "Services" at the top of the page and then selecting "RDS" under the Database section.

  3. Select the RDS Instance:

    • From the list of RDS instances, select the instance for which you want to set the backup retention duration.

  4. Modify the Backup Retention Period:

    • Click on the instance name to open its details page.
    • In the navigation pane on the left, click on "Modify".
    • Scroll down to the "Backup" section.
    • Locate the "Backup retention period" option and set the desired backup retention duration in days. The valid values range from 0 (for disabling automated backups) to a maximum of 35 days.

  5. Apply the Changes:

    • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Continue" button.
    • Review the summary of changes and click on the "Modify DB Instance" button to apply the new backup retention duration.

  6. Monitor the Modification:

    • Once the modification is complete, you can monitor the progress in the RDS console. The instance may undergo a brief downtime during the modification process.

By following these steps, you can remediate the backup retention duration misconfiguration for an AWS RDS instance using the AWS Management Console.

Using CLI

To remediate the issue of missing Backup Retention Duration for an AWS RDS instance using AWS CLI, you can follow these steps:

  1. List Current Backup Retention Settings: Run the following AWS CLI command to list the current backup retention settings for your RDS instance:

    aws rds describe-db-instances --db-instance-identifier YOUR_DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER

  2. Update Backup Retention Duration: Run the following AWS CLI command to modify the backup retention period for your RDS instance. Replace YOUR_DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER with the actual identifier of your RDS instance and NEW_RETENTION_PERIOD with the desired retention period in days:

    aws rds modify-db-instance --db-instance-identifier YOUR_DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER --backup-retention-period NEW_RETENTION_PERIOD

  3. Verify the Changes: Run the describe-db-instances command again to verify that the backup retention period has been updated successfully:

    aws rds describe-db-instances --db-instance-identifier YOUR_DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER

  4. Monitor the Backup Retention: Monitor the backup retention settings periodically to ensure that the changes are applied correctly and the backups are retained for the specified duration.

By following these steps, you can remediate the issue of missing Backup Retention Duration for an AWS RDS instance using AWS CLI.

Using Python

To remediate the backup retention duration misconfiguration for AWS RDS using Python, you can use the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3). Here are the step-by-step instructions:

  1. Install Boto3: If you haven't already installed Boto3, you can install it using pip:

    pip install boto3

  2. Write a Python script to update the backup retention duration for the desired RDS instance. Here's an example script:

import boto3

# Define the RDS instance identifier and the desired backup retention period
rds_instance_identifier = 'your_rds_instance_identifier'
backup_retention_period = 7  # Set the desired retention period in days

# Create an RDS client
rds_client = boto3.client('rds')

# Update the backup retention period for the specified RDS instance
response = rds_client.modify_db_instance(
    DBInstanceIdentifier=rds_instance_identifier,
    BackupRetentionPeriod=backup_retention_period
)

print(f"Backup retention period updated for RDS instance {rds_instance_identifier}")

  1. Replace 'your_rds_instance_identifier' with the actual identifier of your RDS instance.

  2. Set the backup_retention_period variable to the desired retention period in days.

  3. Run the Python script. This script will update the backup retention period for the specified RDS instance to the value you set.

By following these steps, you can remediate the backup retention duration misconfiguration for AWS RDS using Python and ensure that your RDS instances have the correct backup retention period set.

Using Terraform
resource "aws_db_instance" "THIS_DB" {
  # Replace THIS_DB with your DB identifier resource name
  identifier = "DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER" # replace with your DB instance identifier

  # ...other required arguments like engine, instance_class, etc...

  # Set automated backup retention to 7 days
  backup_retention_period = 7
}

This change updates the existing RDS instance in place; it does not force replacement, but applying it may cause a brief outage when AWS applies the modification.

terraform plan should show a change on the existing aws_db_instance with backup_retention_period going from its current value (e.g., 0 or another number) to 7.

Additional Reading:​