AWS Security Hub scanner reference
You can scan your configurations using AWS Security Hub, which provides a comprehensive view of your security state in AWS and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices.
AWS Security Hub step configuration
Scan settings
Scan Mode
The orchestration mode to use for the scan. The following list includes the UI and YAML values for the supported options.
- Extraction A partially-orchestrated scan. The Security step pulls scan results from an external SaaS service and then normalizes and compresses the data.
- Ingestion Ingestion scans are not orchestrated. The Security step ingest results from a previous scan (for a scan run in an previous step) and then normallizes and compresses the results.
Scan Configuration
The predefined configuration to use for the scan. All scan steps have at least one configuration.
Target settings
Type
The target type to scan for vulnerabilities.
- Repository Scan a codebase repo.
- Container Image Scan the layers, libraries, and packages in a container image.
- Instance Scan a running application.
- Configuration Scan your cloud environment by gathering configuration data via the cloud provider’s APIs.
Name
The Identifier that you want to assign to the target you’re scanning in the pipeline. Use a unique, descriptive name such as codebaseAlpha
or jsmith/myalphaservice
.
Variant
An identifier for a specific variant to scan, such as the branch name or image tag. This identifier is used to differentiate or group results for a target. Harness maintains a historical trend for each variant.
Ingestion File
The results data file to use when running an Ingestion scan. STO steps can ingest scan data in SARIF and Harness Custom JSON format. Generally an Ingestion scan consists of a scan step (to generate the data file) and an ingestion step (to ingest the data file).
Authentication settings
Access ID
Username to log in to the scanner.
Access Token
The access token to log in to the scanner. In most cases this is a password or an API key.
You should create a Harness text secret with your encrypted token and reference the secret using the format <+secrets.getValue("project.container-access-id">
. For more information, go to Add and Reference Text Secrets.
Access Region
The fully-qualified URL to the scanner.
Log Level, CLI flags, and Fail on Severity
Log Level
The minimum severity of the messages you want to include in your scan logs. You can specify one of the following:
- DEBUG
- INFO
- WARNING
- ERROR
Additional CLI flags
You can use this field to customize the scan with specific command-line arguments supported by that scanner.
Fail on Severity
Every Security step has a Fail on Severity setting. If the scan finds any vulnerability with the specified severity level or higher, the pipeline fails automatically. You can specify one of the following:
CRITICAL
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW
INFO
NONE
— Do not fail on severity
The YAML definition looks like this: fail_on_severity : critical # | high | medium | low | info | none
Security step settings (deprecated)
You can set up an AWS Security Hub scan using a Security step: create a CI Build or Security Tests stage, add a Security step, and then add the setting:value
pairs as specified below.
Security step dialog box
Here's an example of how to set up a scan in a Security step. scan_type
and policy_type
are scanner-specific; the other settings are common to scans of container images.

product_name
=aws-security-hub
scan_type
=configuration
policy_type
=dataLoad
oringestionOnly
product_config_name
=default
fail_on_severity
- See Fail on Severity.
Configuration scan settings
The following settings apply to all scanners where the scan_type
is configuration
.
configuration_type
- accepted value(s)s:
aws_account
- accepted value(s)s:
configuration_region
configuration_environment
configuration_access_id
configuration_access_token
Ingestion scan settings
The following settings are required for Security steps where the policy_type
is ingestionOnly
.
target name
The Identifier that you want to assign to the target you’re scanning in the pipeline. Use a unique, descriptive name such as codebaseAlpha or jsmith/myalphaservice.variant
An identifier for a specific target to scan, such as the branch name or image tag. This identifier is used to differentiate or group results for a target. Harness maintains a historical trend for each variant.ingestion_file
The results data file to use when running an Ingestion scan. You should specify the full path to the data file in your workspace, such as/shared/customer_artifacts/my_scan_results.json
. STO steps can ingest scan data in SARIF and Harness Custom JSON format.
The following steps outline the general workflow for ingesting scan data into your pipeline:
Specify a shared folder for your scan results, such as
/shared/customer_artifacts
. You can do this in the Overview tab of the Security stage where you're ingesting your data.Create a Run step that copies your scan results to the shared folder. You can run your scan externally, before you run the build, or set up the Run step to run the scan and then copy the results.
Add a Security step after the Run step and add the
target name
,variant
, andingestion_file
settings as described above.
For a complete workflow description and example, go to Ingest Scan Results into an STO Pipeline.