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Securing A City-sized Event: How Amazon Integrates Physical And Logical Security At Re:invent
Securing an event of the magnitude of AWS re:Invent—the Amazon Web Services annual conference in Las Vegas—is no small feat. The most recent event, in December, operated on the scale of a small city, spanning seven venues over twelve miles and nearly seven million square feet across the bustling Las Vegas Strip.
Keeping all 60,000 in-person attendees, 400,000 online participants, and their data secure requires a sophisticated blend of physical and logical security measures—a challenge that we’ve addressed by building an integrated security strategy that brings both sides together. We used every resource available to us, including drones, K9 units, our network security teams, and much more, to help protect every person attending the event and their data.
Figure 1: The re:Invent Command Post
Security is a team sport
At Amazon, our physical security and information security (logical) teams work together to secure our customers, employees, and infrastructure across our diverse range of businesses at scale against a wide range of threats. At large events such as re:Invent, this integrated approach allows us to protect the many aspects of our event—from our attendees, to our on-site computers and servers, to our Wi-Fi network and its users—as comprehensively as possible.
Amazon doesn’t work alone, either. Our event security teams coordinate with Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and over 40 different agencies, including counterterrorism, bomb squad personnel, and first responders.
Figure 2: K9 units – valued members of our onsite security team
These teams are co-located in the Command Post—the nerve center of our security operations. Here, physical and logical security converge as nearly every element of our security footprint comes together, and we monitor the event for threats in real-time. This includes our event security management teams, our intelligence team, and our CCTV camera operators, alongside local law enforcement and emergency management services. As an added layer of protection, we also operate a dedicated Wireless Security Operations Center (WiSOC) in close coordination with our main Command Post, which serves as the primary hub for our wireless and cybersecurity teams.
Fostering open dialogue and information-sharing is critical for effective collaboration to secure re:Invent. And as the threat landscape continues to evolve, organizations must prioritize closing the gap between physical and logical security. Not only is this integrated approach the key to effectively securing a city-sized event such as re:Invent, but it also helps us protect our customers, employees, and company every day.
City-scale security
We deploy a number of integrated security measures at re:Invent to protect our physical and digital assets. When it comes to physical security, the primary concern is, of course, human safety. At re:Invent, we deploy thousands of security personnel, including guards, K9 units, and first responders to help respond to and assist with any issues, such as medical events, fires, theft, or overcrowding. We have CCTV cameras stationed in high-traffic areas and implement strict access control measures, including walkthrough screening detectors at entry points and a robust credentialing system, to create a safe and secure environment for our attendees.
We also have help from drones. The automated, high-flying craft provide a bird’s eye view at re:Play—the culminating concert at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds—and help coordinate responses to issues. Using AWS cloud solutions, live footage is streamed directly to our onsite security teams to monitor crowd flow.
Figure 3: A security team member showcases a drone used to help secure re:Play
We’re also focused on the security of our network, which in turn protects its users—our attendees. Our wireless and cybersecurity teams work to identify anomalous activity across our network, including signs of spoofing—a tactic where actors set up look-a-like Wi-Fi networks in an attempt to lure attendees to connect to their network instead of ours.
Amazon also secures the presentations given by re:Invent’s cloud computing and AI experts, executives, and engineers. To have confidence in sharing their insights, speakers must know that their talks run on secure, uninterrupted channels streaming to hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world. Our re:Invent mobile app is built with security in mind, too, so attendees have a safe place to manage events and in-conference needs.
Our integrated approach to security is made possible by the AWS Cloud, which helps us support the different components of our security operation and share critical information rapidly. Whether we’re facing a logical security threat, physical security concern, or a wellness incident, our success hinges on our response time—and running our operations in the AWS Cloud enables us to move quickly.
Amazon will continue investing in and strengthening our unified approach to help make sure that, no matter the vector of the threat, our teams will have a cohesive, unified response. We’re proud to be a leader in this space and hope our learnings can help others enhance their own security resilience, both inside and outside of events.
For more about this year’s re:Invent, see:
- From Drones to Data: How Amazon Secures AWS Re:Invent, by Tony Bradley, for Forbes
- Announcements and updates from AWS re:Invent 2024, on About Amazon
- Top announcements of AWS re:Invent 2024, on the AWS News Blog
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Steve Schmidt
Steve is the chief security officer for Amazon and has been with the company since February 2008. He leads the information security, physical security, security engineering, and regulatory program teams. From 2010 to 2022, Steve was the chief information security officer for AWS. Prior to joining Amazon, Steve had an extensive career at the FBI, where he served as a senior executive.
