Amazon Web Services (AWS) said on Oct. 22 it has officially launched its security service, "AWS Continuum" Code Vulnerabilities, which finds and fixes code vulnerabilities.

Continuum identifies code vulnerabilities and checks whether they can actually be exploited in attacks. It then organises issues in order of those with the greatest business impact and provides fixes for each issue.

AWS said AI is increasing the burden on organisations' security teams. Attackers use the latest AI models to build attack tools targeting known security gaps within minutes of those gaps becoming public.

As development speeds up, the number of vulnerabilities security teams must review has also increased. Companies running large-scale applications may have scanners find thousands of vulnerabilities a day, but many do not need to be addressed.

In many cases, attackers cannot access them, or other security functions are already blocking them. Until now, it has taken hours to confirm whether a vulnerability is actually dangerous and days to fix it.

Continuum brings together a company’s code and system information running on AWS to create a map that shows the overall structure at a glance. It supports identifying which systems are critical, who manages them and how services are connected to each other. It filters out important systems such as customer data storage, payments and authentication, and gives higher priority the closer an attack path is to those systems.

For reproducible vulnerabilities, it also provides a feature to run attacks directly in an isolated environment. The results report provides code showing that an attack works and steps that can be followed to replicate it. It also reviews whether existing security devices can block the attack.

When an issue is confirmed, Continuum also creates a fix method itself. All fixes are applied only after human review and approval. AWS said it plans to allow Continuum to apply some fixes on its own within standards set by companies.