KSI-SVC-VRIValidating Resource Integrity

Rated partial: these rules prove key management (rotation, retention) as telemetry, but SC-13's core requirement — that the cryptographic module itself is FIPS 140-2/3 validated — is satisfied by using AWS KMS FIPS endpoints (kms-fips.<region>.amazonaws.com) and validated modules, which is a documented configuration/architecture assertion the compliance result does not itself carry. Attach the KMS FIPS endpoint usage evidence and the CMP module certificate reference alongside these results. Rotation is not supported for asymmetric/HMAC/imported-material/custom-key-store keys — scope the rotation rule accordingly.

The strong claim here is narrow and worth stating precisely. validate-logs is real cryptography — SHA-256 hashing with SHA-256/RSA signing, an hourly digest file that references the last hour's log files and carries the signature of the previous digest — so a clean run positively asserts that the delivered log files were not modified or deleted, and can even assert that no log files were delivered in a window you believed was empty. What it will not do: validate files you moved, since they must stay where CloudTrail put them; and it cannot report tampering across a gap — disable validation for an hour and no digest exists for that hour, so the chain simply breaks. Enabling the feature is not the same as checking it, which is why both the Config rule and the CLI run belong here: the rule proves digests are being produced, the run is the only thing that verifies them. Object Lock and Vault Lock are prevention, not detection — they make a deletion fail rather than proving none happened, and Object Lock only counts if the mode and period match your policy: the rule's optional mode parameter is what pins GOVERNANCE versus COMPLIANCE, and unset it passes either. Vault Lock in governance mode can be removed by anyone holding the IAM permission, so read Locked together with LockDate — before that date even a compliance-mode lock is still removable. The honest gap is the host: SI-7 asks for integrity verification of software, firmware and information, and nothing above watches a filesystem. ECR tag immutability stops a tag being repointed at a different image but says nothing about drift inside a running instance; file integrity monitoring is third-party or self-built on AWS, and SI-7(1)'s ‘defined frequency’ is a policy number you compare against, not an API result. Finally, a NON_COMPLIANT-only query returns an empty array on success and says nothing about resources Config never evaluated — join it against recorder coverage before reading emptiness as compliance.

CM-8(3) has two halves and only one comes free. Detection is genuine: APPROVED_AMIS_BY_TAG is configuration-change triggered, so an instance launched from an unapproved image is flagged as it appears rather than at the next sweep, and the remediation records are real evidence of action — TargetId names the document that ran, Automatic separates auto-remediation from a button a human pressed, and StepDetails timestamps each step and quotes the error when one fails. What telemetry cannot supply is the definition of ‘unauthorized’. APPROVED_AMIS_BY_TAG matches on up to ten AMI tag keys or key:value pairs that you assert mean approved, so it tests your tagging discipline as much as your fleet — tag an unvetted image and it becomes compliant. The applications denylist needs exact application names with no wildcards, and the name differs per distribution; it evaluates AWS::SSM::ManagedInstanceInventory, so a node with no agent or no inventory association is simply not evaluated rather than flagged — read it beside the inventory-coverage recipe or you will mistake blindness for cleanliness. Neither rule sees firmware, and neither sees what a container image runs. The response side also carries a judgement someone must record: CM-8(3)b wants a chosen action — disable network access, isolate the component, notify defined personnel — and choosing to isolate a production instance automatically is a risk decision, not a default. Deliberate overlap: EC2_MANAGEDINSTANCE_APPLICATIONS_BLACKLISTED also carries CM-7 and CM-7.01 in the least-functionality recipe, where it proves prohibited software is absent; here the same signal is read as detection of an unauthorized component, with the remediation record attached.