Elastic Security Detection Rules

AWS EC2 Encryption Disabled

Last updated a month ago on 2025-10-16
Created 5 years ago on 2020-06-05

About

Detects when Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) encryption by default is disabled in an AWS region. EBS encryption ensures that newly created volumes and snapshots are automatically protected with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) keys. Disabling this setting introduces significant risk as all future volumes created in that region will be unencrypted by default, potentially exposing sensitive data at rest. Adversaries may disable encryption to weaken data protection before exfiltrating or tampering with EBS volumes or snapshots. This may be a step in preparation for data theft or ransomware-style attacks that depend on unencrypted volumes.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS EC2Tactic: ImpactLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Impact (TA0040)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Data Manipulation (T1565)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Disabling encryption may be done by a system or network administrator. Verify whether the user identity, user agent, and/or hostname should be making changes in your environment. Disabling encryption by unfamiliar users or hosts should be investigated. If known behavior is causing false positives, it can be exempted from the rule.
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
filebeat-*logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations

aws(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
event.dataset:aws.cloudtrail and event.provider:ec2.amazonaws.com and event.action:DisableEbsEncryptionByDefault and event.outcome:success

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS EC2 Encryption Disabled in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).