Amazon Macie status is assessed per region with S3 presence to determine if sensitive data discovery is operational. The outcome reflects whether Macie is active or in a PAUSED/not enabled state for the account and region.
Risk
Without active Macie, sensitive data in S3 can remain unclassified and exposed. Misconfigured access and public buckets may go undetected, enabling data exfiltration and secret leakage. This degrades confidentiality and widens breach blast radius by reducing visibility into where sensitive data resides.
prowler aws --checks macie_is_enabled
Recommendation
Enable and maintain Amazon Macie in all regions hosting S3 data. Use continuous sensitive data discovery, apply custom classifications for your data types, and route findings to monitoring. Enforce least privilege for Macie access and strengthen defense in depth with restrictive bucket policies and access controls.
Remediation
aws macie2 enable-macie --region <REGION>
- Sign in to the AWS Management Console and switch to the target region
- Open Amazon Macie
- Click Get started or Enable Macie
- If Macie shows Suspended/Paused, click Resume Macie
- Repeat in each region with S3 buckets as needed
Source Code
Resource Type
Other