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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

AWS GuardDuty offers centralized data collection and alert mechanisms, allowing monitoring across AWS accounts without additional cost.
GuardDuty effectively monitors for malicious activity and provides timely notifications for proactive action.
It integrates seamlessly with third-party tools and enhances security through intelligent threat detection and remediation features.
AWS GuardDuty facilitates compliance with security standards and its AI/ML-powered algorithms enhance threat detection capabilities.
The tool supports complex security scenarios, including zero-day vulnerability detection and automated threat responses, serving as a SOAR for AWS platforms.

CONS

AWS GuardDuty could benefit from enhancements such as a mobile version, consolidated dashboard analytics, and integrations with other AWS services like QuickSight or Managed Airflow.
Costs can be high and unpredictable when turning on all features, making it more expensive than some commercial vendors.
GuardDuty sometimes shows false positives and could improve its detection accuracy, especially in container environments like AWS Container Service or EKS.
It lacks automatic patching and mapping of alerts sent via email, requiring manual intervention from users.
AWS GuardDuty needs to provide better cost efficiency and more insights into projected costs upon implementing features, aiding in decision-making regarding usage.
 

AWS GuardDuty Pros review quotes

Arunkumar Anbazhagan - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Apr 27, 2022
The most valuable features are the single system for data collection and the alert mechanisms.
MW
System owner of Juniper at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Jul 3, 2022
What I like most about Amazon GuardDuty is that you can monitor your AWS accounts across, but you don't have to pay the additional cost. You can get all your CloudTrail VPC flow logs and DNS logs all in one, and then you get the monitoring with that. A lot of times, if you had a separate tool on-premise, you would have to set up your DNS logs, so usually, Amazon GuardDuty helps with all your additional networking requirements, so I utilize it for continuous monitoring because you can't detect anything if you're not monitoring, and the solution fills that gap. If you don't do anything else first, you can deploy your firewall, and then you've got your Route 53 DNS and DNSSEC, but then Amazon GuardDuty fills that, and then you have audit requirements in AU that says, "Hey, what are your additional logs?", so you can just say, "Hey, we utilize Amazon GuardDuty." You're getting your CloudTrail, your VPC flow logs, and all your DNS logs, and those are your additional logs right there, so the solution meets a lot of requirements. Now, everything comes with a cost, but I also like that the solution also provides threat response and remediation. It's a pretty good product. I've just used it more for log analysis and that's where the value is at, the niche value. Once you do threat detection, it goes into a lot of other integrations you need to implement, so threat detection is only good as the integration, as the user that knows the tools itself, and the architecture and how it's all set up and the rules that you set within that.
Pratik_Savla - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 8, 2022
What we found most valuable in Amazon GuardDuty is its threat detection feature, especially because we were monitoring a huge number of AWS accounts, so we needed a solution that would monitor for any kind of malicious activity. The monitoring aspect of the solution was great because it gave us timely notifications if and when anything happened, and Amazon GuardDuty helped keep us on our toes to make sure we took action right away.
Learn what your peers think about AWS GuardDuty. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Subhada Shubhalaxmi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at EY GDS
Jul 18, 2022
The correlation back end is the solution's most valuable feature.
Trivikram Rajendreaprabhu - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior security engeneer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 18, 2022
Deployment is great, and we didn't face any big challenges.
Hemant Paralkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant at Saama
Jul 19, 2022
Since our environment is cloud based and accessible from the internet, we like the ability to check where the user has logged in from and what kind of API calls that user is doing.
CS
Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at TTN
Jul 10, 2023
We use the tool for threat detection. AWS includes AI features as well. AWS GuardDuty gives us reports.
Vikram Kamthe - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Of Engineering and Data Science at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Jul 12, 2023
It is a highly scalable solution since it is a service by AWS. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Pratik_Savla - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 12, 2023
The way it monitors accounts is definitely a very important feature.
Andre Batson - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
Aug 3, 2023
It kinda just gives us another layer of security. So it does provide some sort of comfort that we do have something that is monitoring for abnormal behavior.
 

AWS GuardDuty Cons review quotes

Arunkumar Anbazhagan - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Apr 27, 2022
An improvement would be to have a mobile version where remote workers can log in and monitor and fix issues.
MW
System owner of Juniper at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Jul 3, 2022
Improvement-wise, Amazon GuardDuty should have an overall dashboard analytics function so we could see what's in the current environment, and then in addition to that, provide best practices and recommendations, particularly to provide some type of observability, and then figure out the login side of it, based on our current environment, in terms of what we're not monitoring and what we should monitor. The solution should also give us a sample code configuration to implement that added feature or feature request. What I'd like to see in the next release of Amazon GuardDuty are more security analytics, reporting, and monitoring. They should provide recommendations and additional options that answer questions such as "Hey, what can we see in our environment?", "What should we implement within the environment?", What's recommended?" We know that cost will always be associated with that, but Amazon GuardDuty should show us the increased costs or decreased costs if we implement it or don't implement it, and that would be a good feature request, particularly with all products within AWS, just for cloud products in general because there are times features are implemented, but once they're deployed, they don't tell you about costs that would be generated along with those features. After features are deployed, there should a summary of the costs that would be generated, and projected based on current usage, so they would give us the option to figure out how long we're going to use those features and the option to keep those on or turn those off. If more services were like that, a lot more people would use those on the cloud.
Pratik_Savla - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 8, 2022
Some of the pain points in Amazon GuardDuty was the cost. When compared to some of the other services, depending on how many we had to monitor, if we had a huge range of accounts, as our accounts increased, we had a cost factor that came into play. Sometimes there were issues, for example, with findings that came up, we wanted to add notes and there were issues back then where notes couldn't be entered properly. If we wanted to leave a note such as "Okay, we have assessed this and this is how we feel", or "This is a false positive", Amazon GuardDuty wasn't allowing us to do that. Even with the suppression of certain findings, there was some issue that we had faced at one time. Those were some of the pain points of the solution.
Learn what your peers think about AWS GuardDuty. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Subhada Shubhalaxmi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at EY GDS
Jul 18, 2022
While sending the alerts to the email, they are not being patched. we have to do the patching and mapping manually. If GuardDuty could include a feature to do this automatically, it will make our job easier. That is something I believe can be improved.
Trivikram Rajendreaprabhu - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior security engeneer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 18, 2022
Amazon GuardDuty could be better enriched in threat intelligence data.
Hemant Paralkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant at Saama
Jul 19, 2022
The solution has to be integrated with new services that AWS adds like QuickSight, Managed Airflow, AppFlow and MWAA.
CS
Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at TTN
Jul 10, 2023
AWS GuardDuty needs to be more customer-oriented.
Vikram Kamthe - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Of Engineering and Data Science at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Jul 12, 2023
We currently find Lacework to be much better at detecting vulnerabilities than AWS GuardDuty. The engines of AWS GuardDuty have to be improved.
Pratik_Savla - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 12, 2023
Because it's a threat detection service, they need to keep up with the various threat factors because new threat factors and attack factors come up all the time.
Andre Batson - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
Aug 3, 2023
For me, I would say just the presentation of findings, like the dashboards and other stuff, could be improved a bit.