AWS Data Encryption and Secrets Management Services for Cloud and DevOps Engineers

📝Introduction

This post will cover the main Technologies of AWS Data Encryption and Secrets Management Services.

📝Data Encryption and Secrets Management Services

• Encryption -> It is a way of scrambling data so that only authorized parties can understand the information. In technical terms, it is the process of converting human-readable plaintext to incomprehensible text, also known as ciphertext.

  • Data in Flight Encryption -> Also referred to as data in transit(DIT) or data in motion is the encryption of data that moves over a network. This is especially important for those using the open internet for transporting data, which is part of most public cloud implementations.

  • Data at Rest Encryption (DARE) -> This s the encryption of the data that is stored in the databases and is not moving through networks. With DARE, data at rest including offline backups are protected.

• AWS Key Management Service(KMS) -> Let us create, manage, and control cryptographic keys across your applications and AWS services.

  • AWS centrally manage keys and defines policies across integrated services and applications from a single point

  • Encrypt data within your applications with the AWS Encryption SDK data encryption library

  • Perform signing operations using asymmetric key pairs to validate digital signatures

  • Securely generate hash-based message authentication codes (HMACs) that ensure message integrity and authenticity

  • KMS in the Real World Scenarios:

    • Protect your data at rest. Activate server-side encryption with AWS KMS using KMS keys that you control and manage.

    • Sign and verify digital signatures. Protect signing operations with AWS KMS using asymmetric KMS keys.

      

• AWS CloudHSM -> It helps to meet corporate, contractual, and regulatory compliance requirements for data security.

  • Generate and use your own cryptographic keys

  • Deploy workloads with high reliability and low latency, and help meet regulatory compliance

  • Manage HSM capacity and control your costs by adding and removing HSMs from your cluster

  • Dedicated hardware for security

  • Pay by the hour, and backup and shut down HSMs when they’re not needed

  • CloudHSM in the Real World Scenarios:

    • Encrypt data at rest. Start generating and using your own encryption keys with ease on AWS.

    • Offload SSL processing for web servers. Confirm web service identities and establish secure HTTPS connections over the internet using SSL and TLS.

      

• AWS Secrets Manager -> It helps to manage, retrieve, and rotate database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycles.

  • Centrally manage the lifecycle of secrets

  • Securely encrypt and centrally audit secrets such as database credentials and API keys

  • Manage access to secrets using fine-grained AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and resource-based policies

  • Rotate secrets automatically to meet your security and compliance requirements

  • Replicate secrets to support disaster recovery scenarios and multi-region applications

  • Secrets Manager in the Real World Scenarios:

    • Audit and monitor secrets usage. Integrate secrets with AWS logging, monitoring, and notification services.

      

• AWS Certificates Manager(ACM) -> It is to provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources.

  • Removes the time-consuming manual process of purchasing, uploading, and renewing SSL/TLS certificates

  • Use no-cost certificates with ACM integrated services

  • Use key management for the certificates

  • ACM in the Real World Scenarios:

    • Improve uptime. Maintain SSL/TLS certificates, including certificate renewals, with automated certificate management.

      

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