📥 Introduction
In today’s cloud-native world, Amazon S3 is a cornerstone for storing application uploads—images, documents, archives, and more. But with flexibility comes risk. Users might unknowingly (or intentionally) upload malicious files that can:
- ❌ Compromise your backend systems
- 📤 Spread malware through shared downloads
- 📦 Bypass downstream processors
⚠️ S3 doesn't scan uploaded files for malware.
Trend Micro File Storage Security (FSS) — a real-time, serverless scanning solution to protect your S3 buckets from file-based threats.
🧨 The Problem: Vulnerable File Uploads
Let’s say you’re running a file-sharing or content review app. Malicious users could upload:
- 📎 Ransomware-infected ZIPs
- 📄 Trojan-embedded Word docs
- 🧾 JavaScript exploits hidden in PDFs
Without inspection, these files could:
- 🖥️ Be processed by backend Lambda or EC2 services
- 🔗 Be shared with other users
- 📉 Lead to data breaches or cloud compromise
🛠️ The Solution: Trend Micro File Storage Security (FSS)
Trend Micro FSS Trend Micro FSS is a serverless, event-driven scanning solution built for AWS. It integrates directly with Amazon S3 and uses Trend Micro's advanced malware detection engine to scan files in real-time. The solution classifies scan outcomes and takes defined actions:
| 🧪 Scan Result | ✅ Action Taken |
|---|---|
| ✔️ Clean | Move to ✅ Clean Bucket |
| 🛑 Malicious | Move to 🚫 Quarantine Bucket |
| ❓ Scan Failed | Move to ⚠️ Failure Bucket |
Key Features at a Glance
⬇️ Decrease Threat Vectors with Malware Scanning: Block known harmful files using Trend Micro anti-malware signatures for viruses, Trojans, spyware, and more.
🤝 File Reputation: Cross-check files against threat intelligence to determine if they are known to be malicious.
✨ Variant Protection: Detect polymorphic or obfuscated malware using advanced pattern-matching and fragment analysis.
💪 Extensive Flexibility: Scan all file types, including .BIN, .EXE, .JPEG, .MP4, .PDF, .TXT, .ZIP, and more — with no size or type restriction.
📊 Architecture Overview
⚙️ Setup Guide (Step-by-Step)
✅ Step 1: Deploy FSS
Subscribe via AWS Marketplace
Deploy using the CloudFormation template
📂 Step 2: Prepare S3 Buckets
uploads-bucket — Original file uploads
clean-bucket — For scanned, safe files
quarantine-bucket — For detected malware
failure-bucket — For scan failures
🔁 Step 3: Create S3 Event Trigger
json
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{
"Event": "s3:ObjectCreated:*",
"LambdaFunctionArn": "arn:aws:lambda:your-function-arn"
}
🧠 Step 4: Lambda Pseudocode (Simplified)
python
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def lambda_handler(event, context):
key = event['Records'][0]['s3']['object']['key']
bucket = event['Records'][0]['s3']['bucket']['name']
scan_result = scan_with_trendmicro(bucket, key)
if scan_result == "CLEAN":
move_to("clean-bucket", key)
elif scan_result == "MALICIOUS":
move_to("quarantine-bucket", key)
else:
move_to("failure-bucket", key)
🔐 Step 5: IAM Role Permissions
Ensure Lambda has access to:
s3:GetObject, PutObject, DeleteObject
Trend Micro FSS API endpoint
Destination buckets
We can also get a report of scan acviity in Trendmicro console
🔔 Bonus Features
📩 Send SNS/Slack alerts on malware detection
🏷️ Tag files with scan_result=clean|malicious|failed
🧩 Connect EventBridge → Security Hub for automatic SOAR response
🧠 Best Practices
✅ Block public access to all buckets
✅ Apply bucket encryption (SSE-S3 or KMS)
✅ Use lifecycle rules to auto-delete old files
✅ Limit file size and scan timeout thresholds
🏁 Final Thoughts
Trend Micro File Storage Security provides a plug-and-play solution to scan every file that hits your S3 bucket. It isolates threats, supports automation, and requires minimal maintenance.
🛡️ Don’t let your file uploads be a backdoor into your cloud.
📚 Resources
🔗 Trend Micro File Storage Security Docs
Top comments (1)
Sourav, I like the idea of adding security by scanning files proactively when they're uploaded to S3.
AWS offers Malware Protection for S3 (GuardDuty service, but can be enabled independently of GuardDuty). What are your thoughts on the comparison of using AWS's native GuardDuty service to scan files or Trend Micro's FSS solution?