Which AWS service provides continuous monitoring and assessment, including an inventory of AWS resources?

AWS Config is designed to provide continuous monitoring and assessment of AWS resources. It maintains an inventory of your AWS resources and tracks their configuration history, allowing you to see changes over time. This service plays a crucial role in compliance auditing, security analysis, and resource management, ensuring that your AWS environment adheres to specified governance standards.

AWS Config evaluates the configuration of your resources against desired configurations defined in rules, which helps in identifying any configurations that deviate from desired states. This capability is essential for organizations that need to maintain stringent security postures and adhere to regulatory requirements.

In contrast, other services mentioned serve different purposes: AWS Shield is focused on DDoS protection; Amazon Inspector performs security assessments of applications; and Amazon CloudWatch primarily provides monitoring and logging of operational metrics and events. Thus, AWS Config stands out as the service specifically meant for continuous monitoring and assessment of AWS resource configurations.