#93 - The DevSecOps Perspective: Key Takeaways From Re:Invent 2025

Andrey and Mattias share a fast re:Invent roundup focused on AWS security. What do VPC Encryption Controls, post-quantum TLS, and org-level S3 block public access change for you? Which features should you switch on now, like ECR image signing, JWT checks at ALB, and air-gapped AWS Backup? Want simple wins you can use today?

 

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Summary

In this episode, Andrey and Mattias deliver a security-heavy recap of AWS re:Invent 2025 announcements, while noting that Paulina is absent and wishing her a speedy recovery. Out of the 500+ releases surrounding re:Invent, they narrow the list down to roughly 20 features that security-conscious teams can act on today — covering encryption, access control, detection, backups, container security, and organization-wide guardrails. Along the way, Andrey reveals a new AI-powered product called Boris that watches the AWS release firehose so you don't have to.

Key Topics AWS re:Invent Through a Security Lens

The hosts frame the episode as the DevSecOps Talks version of a re:Invent recap, complementing a FivexL webinar held the previous month. Despite the podcast's name covering development, security, and operations, the selected announcements lean heavily toward security. Andrey is upfront about it: if security is your thing, stay tuned; otherwise, manage your expectations.

At the FivexL webinar, attendees were asked to prioritize areas of interest across compute, security, and networking. AI dominated the conversation, and people were also curious about Amazon S3 Vectors — a new S3 storage class purpose-built for vector embeddings used in RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures that power LLM applications. It is cost-efficient but lacks hybrid search at this stage.

VPC Encryption and Post-Quantum Readiness

One of the first and most praised announcements is VPC Encryption Control for Amazon VPC, a pre-re:Invent release that lets teams audit and enforce encryption in transit within and across VPCs. The hosts highlight how painful it used to be to verify internal traffic encryption — typically requiring traffic mirroring, spinning up instances, and inspecting packets with tools like Wireshark. This feature offers two modes: monitor mode to audit encryption status via VPC flow logs, and enforce mode to block unencrypted resources from attaching to the VPC.

Mattias adds that compliance expectations are expanding. It used to be enough to encrypt traffic over public endpoints, but the bar is moving toward encryption everywhere, including inside the VPC. The hosts also call out a common pattern: offloading SSL at the load balancer and leaving traffic to targets unencrypted. VPC encryption control helps catch exactly this kind of blind spot.

The discussion then shifts to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) support rolling out across AWS services including S3, ALB, NLB, AWS Private CA, KMS, ACM, and Secrets Manager. AWS now supports ML-KEM (Module Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism), a NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithm, along with ML-DSA (Module Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) for Private CA certificates.

The rationale: state-level actors are already recording encrypted traffic today in a "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy, betting that future quantum computers will crack current encryption. Andrey notes that operational quantum computing feels closer than ever, making it worthwhile to enable post-quantum protections now — especially for sensitive data traversing public networks.

S3 Security Controls and Access Management

Several S3-related updates stand out. Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) for S3 allows access decisions based on resource tags rather than only enumerating specific actions in policies. This is a powerful way to scope permissions — for example, granting access to all buckets tagged with a specific project — though it must be enabled on a per-bucket basis, which the hosts note is a drawback even if necessary to avoid breaking existing security models.

The bigger crowd-pleaser is S3 Block Public Access at the organization level. Previously available at the bucket and account level, this control can now be applied across an entire AWS Organization. The hosts call it well overdue and present it as the ultimate "turn it on and forget it" control: in 2026, there is no good reason to have a public S3 bucket.

Container Image Signing

Amazon ECR Managed Image Signing is a welcome addition. ECR now provides a managed service for signing container images, leveraging AWS Signer for key management and certificate lifecycle. Once configured with a signing rule, ECR automatically signs images as they are pushed. This eliminates the operational overhead of setting up and maintaining container image signing infrastructure — previously a significant barrier for teams wanting to verify image provenance in their supply chains.

Backups, Air-Gapping, and Ransomware Resilience

AWS Backup gets significant attention. The hosts discuss air-gapped AWS Backup Vault support as a primary backup target, positioning it as especially relevant for teams where ransomware is on the threat list. These logically air-gapped vaults live in an Amazon-owned account and are locked by default with a compliance vault lock to ensure immutability.

The strong recommendation: enable AWS Backup for any important data, and keep backups isolated in a separate account from your workloads. If an attacker compromises your production account, they should not be able to reach your recovery copies. Related updates include KMS customer-managed key support for air-gapped vaults for better encryption flexibility, and GuardDuty Malware Protection for AWS Backup, which can scan backup artifacts for malware before restoration.

Data Protection in Databases

Dynamic data masking in Aurora PostgreSQL draws praise from both hosts. Using the new pg_columnmask extension, teams can configure column-level masking policies so that queries return masked data instead of actual values — for example, replacing credit card numbers with wildcards. The data in the database remains unmodified; masking happens at query time based on user roles.

Mattias compares it to capabilities already present in databases like Snowflake and highlights how useful it is when sharing data with external partners or other teams. When the idea of using masked production data for testing comes up, the hosts gently push back — don't do that — but both agree that masking at the database layer is a strong control because it reduces the risk of accidental data exposure through APIs or front-end applications.

Identity, IAM, and Federation Improvements

The episode covers several IAM-related features. AWS IAM Outbound Identity Federation allows federating AWS identities to external services via JWT, effectively letting you use AWS identity as a platform for authenticating to third-party services — similar to how you connect GitHub or other services to AWS today, but in the other direction.

The AWS Login CLI command provides short-lived credentials for IAM users who don't have AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) configured. The hosts see it as a better alternative than storing static IAM credentials locally, but also question whether teams should still be relying on IAM users at all — their recommendation is to set up IAM Identity Center and move on.

The AWS Source VPC ARN condition key gets particular enthusiasm. It allows IAM policies to check which VPC a request originated from, enabling conditions like "allow this action only if the request comes from this VPC." For teams doing attribute-based access control in IAM, this is a significant addition.

AWS Secrets Manager Managed External Secrets is another useful feature that removes a common operational burden. Previously, rotating third-party SaaS credentials required writing and maintaining custom Lambda functions. Managed external secrets provides built-in rotation for partner integrations — Salesforce, BigID, and Snowflake at launch — with no Lambda functions needed.

Better Security at the Network and Service Layer

JWT verification in AWS Application Load Balancer simplifies machine-to-machine and service-to-service authentication. Teams previously had to roll their own Lambda-based JWT verification; now it is supported out of the box. The recommendation is straightforward: drop the Lambda and use the built-in capability.

AWS Network Firewall Proxy is in public preview. While the hosts have not explored it deeply, their read is that it could help with more advanced network inspection scenarios — not just outgoing internet traffic through NAT gateways, but potentially also traffic heading toward internal corporate data centers.

Developer-Oriented: REST API Streaming

Although the episode is mainly security-focused, the hosts include REST API streaming in Amazon API Gateway as a nod to developers. This enables progressive response payload streaming, which is especially relevant for LLM use cases where streaming tokens to clients is the expected interaction pattern. Mattias notes that applications are moving beyond small JSON payloads — streaming is becoming table stakes as data volumes grow.

Centralized Observability and Detection

CloudWatch unified management for operational, security, and compliance data promises cross-account visibility from a single pane of glass, without requiring custom log aggregation pipelines built from Lambdas and glue code. The hosts are optimistic but immediately flag the cost: CloudWatch data ingest pricing can escalate quickly when dealing with high-volume sources like access logs. Deep pockets may be required.

Detection is a recurring theme throughout the episode. The hosts discuss CloudTrail Insights for data events (useful if you are already logging data-plane events — another deep-pockets feature), extended threat detection for EC2 and ECS in GuardDuty using AI-powered analysis to correlate security signals across network activity, runtime behavior, and API calls, and the public preview of AWS Security Agent for automated security investigation.

On GuardDuty specifically, the recommendation is clear: if you don't have it enabled, go enable it — it gives you a good baseline that works out of the box across your services with minimal setup. You can always graduate to more sophisticated tooling later, but GuardDuty is the gap-stopper you start with.

Mattias drives the broader point home: incidents are inevitable, and what you can control is how fast you detect and respond. AWS is clearly investing heavily in the detection side, and teams should enable these capabilities as fast as possible.

Control Tower, Organizations, and Guardrails at Scale

Several updates make governance easier to adopt at scale: - Dedicated controls for AWS Control Tower without requiring a full Control Tower deployment — you can now use Control Tower guardrails à la carte. - Automatic enrollment in Control Tower — a feature the hosts feel should have existed already. - Required tags in Organizations stack policies — enforcing tagging standards at the organization level. - Amazon Inspector organization-wide management — centralized vulnerability scanning across all accounts. - Billing transfer for AWS Organizations — useful for AWS resellers managing multiple organizations. - Delete protection for CloudWatch Log Groups — a small but important safeguard.

Mattias says plainly: everyone should use Control Tower.

MCP Servers and AWS's Evolving AI Approach

The conversation shifts to the public preview of AWS MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers. Unlike traditional locally-hosted MCP servers that proxy LLM requests to API calls, AWS is taking a different approach with remote, fully managed MCP servers hosted on AWS infrastructure. These allow AI agents and AI-native IDEs to interact with AWS services over HTTPS without running anything locally.

AWS launched four managed MCP servers — AWS, EKS, ECS, and SageMaker — that consolidate capabilities like AWS documentation access, API execution across 15,000+ AWS APIs, and pre-built agent workflows. However, the IAM model is still being worked out: you currently need separate permissions to call the MCP server and to perform the underlying AWS actions it invokes. The hosts treat this as interesting but still evolving.

Boris: AI for AWS Change Awareness

Toward the end of the episode, Andrey reveals a personal project: Boris (getboris.ai), an AI-powered DevOps teammate he has been building. Boris connects to the systems an engineering team already uses and provides evidence-based answers and operational automation.

The specific feature Andrey has been working on takes the AWS RSS feed — where new announcements land daily — and cross-references it against what a customer actually has running in their AWS Organization. Instead of manually sifting through hundreds of releases, Boris sends a digest highlighting only the announcements relevant to your environment and explaining how you would benefit.

Mattias immediately connects this to the same problem in security: teams are overwhelmed by the constant flow of feature updates and vulnerability news. Having an AI that filters and contextualizes that information is, in his words, "brilliant."

Andrey also announces that Boris has been accepted into the Tehnopol AI Accelerator in Tallinn, Estonia — a program run by the Tehnopol Science and Business Park that supports early-stage AI startups — selected from more than 100 companies.

Highlights

• Setting expectations: "The selection of announcements smells more like security only. If security is your thing, stay tuned in. If it's not really, well, it's still interesting, but I'm just trying to manage your possible disappointment."
• On VPC encryption control: The hosts describe how proving internal encryption used to require traffic mirroring, Wireshark, and significant pain — this feature makes it a configuration toggle.
• On public S3 buckets: "In 2026 there is no good reason to have a public S3 bucket. Just turn it on and forget about it."
• On production data for testing: When someone floats using masked production data for testing — "Maybe don't do that."
• On detection over prevention: "You cannot really prevent something from happening in your environment. What you can control is how you react when it's going to happen. Detection is really where I put effort."
• On Boris: When Andrey describes how Boris watches the AWS release feed and tells you which announcements actually matter for your environment, Mattias's reaction: "This is brilliant."
• On getting started with AWS security: "If you are a startup building on AWS and compliance is important, it's quite easy to get it working. All the building blocks and tools are available for you to do the right things."

Resources

• Introducing VPC Encryption Controls — AWS blog post explaining monitor and enforce modes for VPC encryption in transit.
• AWS Post-Quantum Cryptography — AWS overview of post-quantum cryptography migration, including ML-KEM support across S3, ALB, NLB, KMS, and Private CA.
• S3 Block Public Access Organization-Level Enforcement — Announcement for enforcing S3 public access blocks across an entire AWS Organization.
• Amazon ECR Managed Container Image Signing — Guide to setting up managed image signing with ECR and AWS Signer.
• GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection for EC2 and ECS — How GuardDuty uses AI/ML to correlate security signals and detect multi-stage attacks on compute workloads.
• Dynamic Data Masking for Aurora PostgreSQL — How to configure column-level data masking with the pg_columnmask extension.
• Understanding IAM for Managed AWS MCP Servers — AWS Security Blog post explaining the IAM permission model for remote MCP servers.
• B.O.R.I.S — Your AI DevOps Teammate — The AI-powered product discussed in the episode that tracks AWS announcements and matches them to your environment.