At AWS re:Inforce 2025 (June 16-18, Philadelphia), AWS Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Amy Herzog delivered the keynote address, announcing new security innovations. Throughout the event, AWS announced additional security capabilities focused on simplifying security at scale and enabling organizations to build more resilient applications in the cloud. Below is a comprehensive roundup of the major security launches and updates announced at this year’s conference.

Verify internal access to critical AWS resources with new IAM Access Analyzer capabilities
A new capability in AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer helps security teams verify which principals within their AWS organization have access to critical resources like S3 buckets, DynamoDB tables, and RDS snapshots by using automated reasoning to evaluate multiple policies and provide findings through a unified dashboard.

AWS IAM now enforces MFA for root users across all account types
The new Multi-Factor Authentication enforcement prevents over 99% of password-related attacks. You can use a range of supported IAM MFA methods, including FIDO-certified security keys to harden access to your AWS accounts. AWS supports FIDO2 passkeys for a user-friendly MFA implementation and allows you to register up to 8 MFA devices per root and IAM user.

Improve your security posture using Amazon threat intelligence on AWS Network Firewall
This new Network Firewall managed rule group offers protection against active threats relevant to workloads in AWS. The feature uses the Amazon threat intelligence system MadPot to continuously track attack infrastructure, including malware hosting URLs, botnet command and control servers, and crypto mining pools, identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs) for active threats.

AWS Certificate Manager introduces exportable public SSL/TLS certificates to use anywhere
You can now use AWS Certificate Manager to issue exportable public certificates for your AWS, hybrid, or multicloud workloads that require secure TLS traffic termination.

AWS WAF simplified console experience
The new AWS WAF console experience reduces security configuration steps by up to 80% through pre-configured protection packs. Security teams can quickly implement comprehensive protection for specific application types, with consolidated security metrics and customizable controls through an intuitive interface.

Amazon CloudFront simplifies web application delivery and security with new user-friendly interface
Try the simplified console experience with Amazon CloudFront to accelerate and secure web applications within a few clicks by automating TLS certificate provisioning, DNS configuration, and security settings through an integrated interface with AWS WAF’s enhanced Rule Packs.

New AWS Shield feature discovers network security issues before they can be exploited (Preview)
Shield network security posture management automatically discovers and analyzes network resources across AWS accounts, prioritizes security risks based on AWS best practices, and provides actionable remediation recommendations to protect applications against threats like SQL injections and DDoS attacks.

Unify your security with the new AWS Security Hub for risk prioritization and response at scale (Preview)
AWS Security Hub has been enhanced to transform security signals into actionable insights, helping security teams prioritize and respond to critical issues at scale. This unified solution provides comprehensive visibility across your cloud environment while reducing the complexity of managing multiple security tools.

Amazon GuardDuty expands Extended Threat Detection coverage to Amazon EKS clusters
Amazon GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection now supports Amazon EKS clusters, helping you detect sophisticated multistage attacks by correlating security signals across Kubernetes audit logs, runtime behaviors, and AWS API activities. This enhancement automatically identifies critical attack sequences that might otherwise go unnoticed, enabling faster response to threats.

New categories for the AWS MSSP Competency
The AWS MSSP Competency (previously AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency) now includes new categories covering infrastructure security, workload security, application security, data protection, identity and access management, incident response, and cyber recovery. Partners provide 24/7 monitoring and incident response through dedicated Security Operations Centers.

Secure your Express application APIs in minutes with Amazon Verified Permissions
Amazon Verified Permissions announced the release of the verified-permissions-express-toolkit, an open-source package that allows developers to implement authorization for Express web application APIs in minutes using Amazon Verified Permissions.

Beyond compute: Shifting vulnerability detection left with Amazon Inspector code security
Amazon Inspector code security capabilities are now generally available, helping you secure applications before production by rapidly identifying and prioritizing security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across application source code, dependencies, and infrastructure as code (IaC).

AWS Backup adds new Multi-party approval for logically air-gapped vaults
Multi-party approval for AWS Backup logically air-gapped vaults enables you to recover your backup data even when your AWS account is compromised, by leveraging authorization from a designated approval team of trusted individuals who can enable vault sharing with a recovery account.