What is Amazon Macie?
Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security service that automatically discovers and protects sensitive data in Amazon S3. Macie uses machine learning and pattern matching to find personally identifiable information (PII), financial information, and credentials. The service supports GDPR compliance through automatic data mapping.
Core Features
- Automatic Bucket Inventory: Overview of all S3 buckets with encryption and access status
- Sensitive Data Discovery: ML-based detection of PII, PHI, and financial information
- Custom Data Identifiers: Custom detection patterns for industry-specific data
- Findings Management: Prioritized alerts with integration into Security Hub
- Multi-Account Support: Central management via AWS Organizations
Typical Use Cases
GDPR Compliance: Identify all S3 objects containing personal data. Macie creates a data inventory showing where sensitive data is stored and who has access.
Data Loss Prevention: Continuously monitor new uploads for sensitive content. Findings trigger alerts or automatic remediation via EventBridge and Lambda.
Security Posture Management: Detect unencrypted buckets, publicly accessible data, and excessive access permissions.
Benefits
- Automatic discovery without manual configuration
- Over 100 predefined data types including EU-specific formats
- Integration with Security Hub for centralized finding management
- Automatically scales to petabytes
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon Macie: setup for multi-account environments, custom data identifiers for your industry, remediation workflows, and GDPR compliance reporting.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Macie?
Amazon Macie is a data discovery service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to find sensitive data in S3. The service detects PII such as names, addresses, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and more.
What data types does Macie detect?
Macie detects over 100 data types: names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, credit card numbers, IBAN, AWS credentials, API keys, and country-specific IDs like German ID card numbers.
How does automatic discovery work?
After activation, Macie automatically scans S3 buckets and classifies data. Findings show affected objects with severity and data type. Scheduled jobs enable regular scans of new data.
How much does Amazon Macie cost?
Bucket inventory is free. Automatic data discovery costs $1.25 per bucket. Scan jobs cost $1 per GB for the first 50,000 GB, then cheaper. The first 30 days are free for new accounts.