Security Briefing — Amazon Security Lake Launch
AWS announced Amazon Security Lake on November 29, 2022, delivering an Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) data lake that centralizes security telemetry across AWS, on-premises, and SaaS sources.
Executive briefing: At AWS re:Invent 2022 on , AWS launched Amazon Security Lake. The managed service automatically normalizes security logs into OCSF format and stores them in Amazon S3 to power analytics with Amazon Athena, OpenSearch, and third-party SIEM tooling.
Key capabilities
- OCSF normalization. Built-in integrations map CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, Route 53 Resolver, and partner telemetry into a consistent schema.
- Automated partitioning. Security Lake manages S3 lifecycle policies, partitioning, and Lake Formation permissions for governance.
- Multi-source ingestion. Supports on-premises and SaaS log collection via AWS Open Cybersecurity Schema partners.
- Analytics integrations. Connects to Amazon Athena, Glue, OpenSearch, and security partners for threat detection and compliance reporting.
Implementation guidance
- Enable Security Lake across accounts with AWS Organizations and Lake Formation to centralize least-privilege access.
- Align detection engineering roadmaps around OCSF taxonomies to standardize query development.
- Integrate lifecycle policies with retention mandates (e.g., PCI DSS, SOX) before onboarding regulated workloads.