If you are using AWS Lambda as your serverless architecture for the development, you should be concerned about the security aspect of it. It is necessary to implement certain best practices for your lambda functions and AWS X-Ray which facilitates secure development of applications across your infrastructure.
Trace your AWS Lambda functions using the X-Ray
AWS X-Ray helps developers to identify and debug errors in their applications which have been built using a serverless/microservices architecture like AWS Lambda.
X-Ray provides you with capabilities to monitor and trace the underlying components of your applications. It is a service that collects data and gives you a detailed view of requests as they traverse your application. It also provides tools and insights that you can use to deep-dive in the collected data for further analysis of areas where there are possibilities of performance optimization.
As a recommended security practice, users should use AWS X-Ray with their Lambda functions which helps in identifying errors and performance bottlenecks. If AWS X-Ray is enabled for AWS Lambda functions, it saves time and effort required in manual debugging and operating Lambda functions.
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Centilytics has a dedicated insight for Lambda function tracing and specifies whether AWS X-Ray is enabled for your Lambda functions or not.
Insight Descriptions:
There can be two possible scenarios:
| Severity | Description |
 Warning |
This indication will be displayed if AWS X-Ray is not enabled for your Lambda functions. |
 OK |
This indication will be displayed if you have X-Ray enabled for your Lambda functions. |
Description of further columns are as follows:
- Account Id: This column shows the respective account ID of the user’s account.
- Account Name: This column shows the corresponding account name to the user’s account.
- Region: This column shows the region in which the corresponding resource exists.
- Function Name: This column shows the name of your lambda function.
- Identifier: This column shows the ARN or Amazon Resource Number of your lambda function for unique identification of different resources.
Filters Applicable:
| Filter Name | Description |
| Account Id | Applying the account Id filter will display data for the selected account Id. |
| Region | Applying the region filter will display data corresponding to the selected region |
| Severity | Applying severity filter will display public snapshots according to the selected severity type i.e. selecting critical will display all resources with critical severity. Same will be the case for Warning and Ok severity types. |
| Resource Tags | Applying resource tags filter will display those resources which have been assigned the selected resource tag. For e.g., A user has tagged some public snapshots by a resource tag named environment. Then selecting an environment from the resource tags filter will display all those resources tagged by the tag name environment. |
| Resource Tags Value | Applying resource tags value filter will display data which will have the selected resource tag value. For e.g. – Let’s say a user has tagged some resource by a tag named environment and has a value say production (environment: production).
Hence, the user can view data of all the resources which have “environment:production” tag assigned. The user can use the tag value filter only when a tag name has been provided. |
Read more about using the X-Ray.