Tag Archives: AWS Nitro System

How AWS can help you navigate the complexity of digital sovereignty

Post Syndicated from Max Peterson original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-aws-can-help-you-navigate-the-complexity-of-digital-sovereignty/

Customers from around the world often tell me that digital sovereignty is a top priority as they look to meet new compliance and industry regulations. In fact, 82% of global organizations are either currently using, planning to use, or considering sovereign cloud solutions in the next two years, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). However, many leaders face complexity as policies and requirements continue to rapidly evolve, and have concerns on acquiring the right knowledge and skills, at an affordable cost, to simplify efforts in meeting digital sovereignty goals.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we understand that protecting your data in a world with changing regulations, technology, and risks takes teamwork. We’re committed to making sure that the AWS Cloud remains sovereign-by-design, as it has been from day one, and providing customers with more choice to help meet their unique sovereignty requirements across our offerings in AWS Regions around the world, dedicated sovereign cloud infrastructure solutions, and the recently announced independent European Sovereign Cloud. In this blog post, I’ll share how the cloud is helping organizations meet their digital sovereignty needs, and ways that we can help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape.

Digital sovereignty needs of customers vary based on multiple factors

Digital sovereignty means different things to different people, and every country or region has their own requirements. Adding to the complexity is the fact that no uniform guidance exists for the types of workloads, industries, and sectors that must adhere to these requirements.

Although digital sovereignty needs vary based on multiple factors, key themes that we’ve identified by listening to customers, partners, and regulators include data residency, operator access restriction, resiliency, and transparency. AWS works closely with customers to understand the digital sovereignty outcomes that they’re focused on to determine the right AWS solutions that can help to meet them.

Meet requirements without compromising the benefits of the cloud

We introduced the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge in 2022 as part of our commitment to offer all AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and security features available in the cloud. We continue to deeply engage with regulators to help make sure that AWS meets various standards and achieves certifications that our customers directly inherit, allowing them to meet requirements while driving continuous innovation. AWS was recently named a leader in Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU) by Information Services Group (ISG), a global technology research and IT advisory firm.

Customers who use our global infrastructure with sovereign-by-design features can optimize for increased scale, agility, speed, and reduced costs while getting the highest levels of security and protection. Our AWS Regions are powered by the AWS Nitro System, which helps ensure the confidentiality and integrity of customer data. Building on our commitment to provide greater transparency and assurances on how AWS services are designed and operated, the security design of our Nitro System was validated in an independent public report by the global cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group.

Customers have full control of their data on AWS and determine where their data is stored, how it’s stored, and who has access to it. We provide tools to help you automate and monitor your storage location and encrypt your data, including data residency guardrails in AWS Control Tower. We recently announced more than 65 new digital sovereignty controls that you can choose from to help prevent actions, enforce configurations, and detect undesirable changes.

All AWS services support encryption, and most services also support encryption with customer managed keys that AWS can’t access such as AWS Key Management Service (KMS), AWS CloudHSM, and AWS KMS External Key Store (XKS). Both the hardware used in AWS KMS and the firmware used in AWS CloudHSM are FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliant as certified by a NIST-accredited laboratory.

Infrastructure choice to support your unique needs and local regulations

AWS provides hybrid cloud storage and edge computing capabilities so that you can use the same infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools across your environments. We think of our AWS infrastructure and services as a continuum that helps meet your requirements wherever you need it. Having a consistent experience across environments helps to accelerate innovation, increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs by using the same skills and toolsets, and meet specific security standards by adopting cloud security wherever applications and data reside.

We work closely with customers to support infrastructure decisions that meet unique workload needs and local regulations, and continue to invent based on what we hear from customers. To help organizations comply with stringent regulatory requirements, we launched AWS Dedicated Local Zones. This is a type of infrastructure that is fully managed by AWS, built for exclusive use by a customer or community, and placed in a customer-specified location or data center to run sensitive or other regulated industry workloads. At AWS re:Invent 2023, I sat down with Cheow Hoe Chan, Government Chief Digital Technology Officer of Singapore, to discuss how we collaborated with Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Group to define and build this dedicated infrastructure.

We also recently announced our plans to launch the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to provide customers in highly regulated industries with more choice to help meet varying data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency requirements. This is a new, independent cloud located and operated within the European Union (EU) that will have the same security, availability, and performance that our customers get from existing AWS Regions today, with important features specific to evolving EU regulations.

Build confidently with AWS and our AWS Partners

In addition to our AWS offerings, you can access our global network of more than 100,000 AWS Partners specialized in various competencies and industry verticals to get local guidance and services.

There is a lot of complexity involved with navigating the evolving digital sovereignty landscape—but you don’t have to do it alone. Using the cloud and working with AWS and our partners can help you move faster and more efficiently while keeping costs low. We’re committed to helping you meet necessary requirements while accelerating innovation, and can’t wait to see the kinds of advancements that you’ll continue to drive.

 
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Max Peterson

Max Peterson

Max is the Vice President of AWS Sovereign Cloud. He leads efforts to ensure that all AWS customers around the world have the most advanced set of sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards, and security features available in the cloud. Before his current role, Max served as the VP of AWS Worldwide Public Sector (WWPS) and created and led the WWPS International Sales division, with a focus on empowering government, education, healthcare, aerospace and satellite, and nonprofit organizations to drive rapid innovation while meeting evolving compliance, security, and policy requirements. Max has over 30 years of public sector experience and served in other technology leadership roles before joining Amazon. Max has earned both a Bachelor of Arts in Finance and Master of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland.

AWS Nitro System gets independent affirmation of its confidential compute capabilities

Post Syndicated from Sheila Busser original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-nitro-system-gets-independent-affirmation-of-its-confidential-compute-capabilities/

This blog post was written By Anthony Liguori, VP/Distinguished Engineer, EC2 AWS.

Customers around the world trust AWS to keep their data safe, and keeping their workloads secure and confidential is foundational to how we operate. Since the inception of AWS, we have relentlessly innovated on security, privacy tools, and practices to meet, and even exceed, our customers’ expectations.

The AWS Nitro System is the underlying platform for all modern AWS compute instances which has allowed us to deliver the data isolation, performance, cost, and pace of innovation that our customers require. It’s a pioneering design of specialized hardware and software that protects customer code and data from unauthorized access during processing.

When we launched the Nitro System in 2017, we delivered a unique architecture that restricts any operator access to customer data. This means no person or even service from AWS, can access data when it is being used in an Amazon EC2 instance. We knew that designing the system this way would present several architectural and operational challenges for us. However, we also knew that protecting customers’ data in this way was the best way to support our customer’s needs.

When AWS made its Digital Sovereignty Pledge last year, we committed to providing greater transparency and assurances to customers about how AWS services are designed and operated, especially when it comes to handling customer data. As part of that increased transparency, we engaged NCC Group, a leading cybersecurity consulting firm based in the United Kingdom, to conduct an independent architecture review of the Nitro System and the security assurances we make to our customers. NCC has now issued its rand affirmed our claims.

The report states, “As a matter of design, NCC Group found no gaps in the Nitro System that would compromise [AWS] security claims.” Specifically, the report validates the following statements about our Nitro System production hosts:

  1. There is no mechanism for a cloud service provider employee to log in to the underlying host.
  2. No administrative API can access customer content on the underlying host.
  3. There is no mechanism for a cloud service provider employee to access customer content stored on instance storage and encrypted EBS volumes.
  4. There is no mechanism for a cloud service provider employee to access encrypted data transmitted over the network.
  5. Access to administrative APIs always requires authentication and authorization.
  6. Access to administrative APIs is always logged.
  7. Hosts can only run tested and signed software that is deployed by an authenticated and authorized deployment service. No cloud service provider employee can deploy code directly onto hosts.

The report details NCC’s analysis for each of these claims. You can also find additional details about the scope, methodology, and steps that NCC used to evaluate the claims.

How Nitro System protects customer data

At AWS, we know that our customers, especially those who have sensitive or confidential data, may have worries about putting that data in the cloud. That’s why we’ve architected the Nitro System to ensure that your confidential information is as secure as possible. We do this in several ways:

There is no mechanism for any system or person to log in to Amazon EC2 servers, read the memory of EC2 instances, or access any data on encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes.

If any AWS operator, including those with the highest privileges, needs to perform maintenance work on the EC2 server, they can do so only by using a strictly limited set of authenticated, authorized, and audited administrative APIs. Critically, none of these APIs have the ability to access customer data on the EC2 server. These restrictions are built into the Nitro System itself, and no AWS operator can circumvent these controls and protections.

The Nitro System also protects customers from AWS system software through the innovative design of our lightweight Nitro Hypervisor, which manages memory and CPU allocation. Typical commercial hypervisors provide administrators with full access to the system, but with the Nitro System, the only interface operators can use is a restricted API. This means that customers and operators cannot interact with the system in unapproved ways and there is no equivalent of a “root” user. This approach enhances security and allows AWS to update systems in the background, fix system bugs, monitor performance, and even perform upgrades without impacting customer operations or customer data. Customers are unaffected during system upgrades, and their data remains protected.

Finally, the Nitro System can also provide customers an extra layer of data isolation from their own operators and software. AWS created  , which allow for isolated compute environments, which is ideal for organizations that need to process personally identifiable information, as well as healthcare, financial, and intellectual property data within their compute instances. These enclaves do not share memory or CPU cores with the customer instance. Further, Nitro Enclaves have cryptographic attestation capabilities that let customers verify that all of the software deployed has been validated and not compromised.

All of these prongs of the Nitro System’s security and confidential compute capabilities required AWS to invest time and resources into building the system’s architecture. We did so because we wanted to ensure that our customers felt confident entrusting us with their most sensitive and confidential data, and we have worked to continue earning that trust. We are not done and this is just one step AWS is taking to increase the transparency about how our services are designed and operated. We will continue to innovate on and deliver unique features that further enhance our customers’ security without compromising on performance.

Learn more:

Watch Anthony speak about AWS Nitro System Security here.

Delivering on the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Control without compromise

Post Syndicated from Matt Garman original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/delivering-on-the-aws-digital-sovereignty-pledge-control-without-compromise/

At AWS, earning and maintaining customer trust is the foundation of our business. We understand that protecting customer data is key to achieving this. We also know that trust must continue to be earned through transparency and assurances.

In November 2022, we announced the new AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, our commitment to offering all AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud. Two pillars of this are verifiable control over data access, and the ability to encrypt everything everywhere. We already offer a range of data protection features, accreditations, and contractual commitments that give customers control over where they locate their data, who can access it, and how it is used. Today, I’d like to update you on how we are continuing to earn your trust with verifiable control over customer data access and external control of your encryption keys.

AWS Nitro System achieves independent third-party validation

We are committed to helping our customers meet evolving sovereignty requirements and providing greater transparency and assurances to how AWS services are designed and operated. With the AWS Nitro System, which is the foundation of AWS computing service Amazon EC2, we designed and delivered first-of-a-kind innovation by eliminating any mechanism AWS personnel have to access customer data on Nitro. Our removal of an operator access mechanism was unique in 2017 when we first launched the Nitro System.

As we continue to deliver on our digital sovereignty pledge of customer control over data access, I’m excited to share with you an independent report on the security design of the AWS Nitro System. We engaged NCC Group, a global cybersecurity consulting firm, to conduct an architecture review of our security claims of the Nitro System and produce a public report. This report confirms that the AWS Nitro System, by design, has no mechanism for anyone at AWS to access your data on Nitro hosts. The report evaluates the architecture of the Nitro System and our claims about operator access. It concludes that “As a matter of design, NCC Group found no gaps in the Nitro System that would compromise these security claims.” It also goes on to state, “NCC Group finds…there is no indication that a cloud service provider employee can obtain such access…to any host.” Our computing infrastructure, the Nitro System, has no operator access mechanism, and now is supported by a third-party analysis of those data controls. Read more in the NCC Group report.

New AWS Service Term

At AWS, security is our top priority. The NCC report shows the Nitro System is an exceptional computing backbone for AWS, with security at its core. The Nitro controls that prevent operator access are so fundamental to the Nitro System that we’ve added them in our AWS Service Terms, which are applicable to anyone who uses AWS.

Our AWS Service Terms now include the following on the Nitro System:

AWS personnel do not have access to Your Content on AWS Nitro System EC2 instances. There are no technical means or APIs available to AWS personnel to read, copy, extract, modify, or otherwise access Your Content on an AWS Nitro System EC2 instance or encrypted-EBS volume attached to an AWS Nitro System EC2 instance. Access to AWS Nitro System EC2 instance APIs – which enable AWS personnel to operate the system without access to Your Content – is always logged, and always requires authentication and authorization.

External control of your encryption keys with AWS KMS External Key Store

As part of our promise to continue to make the AWS Cloud sovereign-by-design, we pledged to continue to invest in an ambitious roadmap of capabilities, which includes our encryption capabilities. At re:Invent 2022, we took further steps to deliver on this roadmap of encrypt everything everywhere with encryption keys managed inside or outside the AWS Cloud by announcing the availability of AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) External Key Store (XKS). This innovation supports our customers who have a regulatory need to store and use their encryption keys outside the AWS Cloud. The open source XKS specification offers customers the flexibility to adapt to different HSM deployment use cases. While AWS KMS also prevents AWS personnel from accessing customer keys, this new capability may help some customers demonstrate compliance with specific regulations or industry expectations requiring storage and use of encryption keys outside of an AWS data center for certain workloads.

In order to accelerate our customers’ ability to adopt XKS for regulatory purposes, we collaborated with external HSM, key management, and integration service providers that our customers trust. To date, ThalesEntrustFortanix, DuoKey, and HashiCorp have launched XKS implementations, and SalesforceAtos, and T-Systems have announced that they are building integrated service offerings around XKS. In addition, many SaaS solutions offer integration with AWS KMS for key management of their encryption offerings. Customers using these solutions, such as the offerings from Databricks, MongoDB, Reltio, Slack, Snowflake, and Zoom, can now utilize keys in external key managers via XKS to secure data. This allows customers to simplify their key management strategies across AWS as well as certain SaaS solutions by providing a centralized place to manage access policies and audit key usage.

We remain committed to helping our customers meet security, privacy, and digital sovereignty requirements. We will continue to innovate sovereignty features, controls, and assurances within the global AWS Cloud and deliver them without compromise to the full power of AWS.

 
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Matt Garman

Matt Garman

Matt is currently the Senior Vice President of AWS Sales, Marketing and Global Services at AWS, and also sits on Amazon’s executive leadership S-Team. Matt joined Amazon in 2006, and has held several leadership positions in AWS over that time. Matt previously served as Vice President of the Amazon EC2 and Compute Services businesses for AWS for over 10 years. Matt was responsible for P&L, product management, and engineering and operations for all compute and storage services in AWS. He started at Amazon when AWS first launched in 2006 and served as one of the first product managers, helping to launch the initial set of AWS services. Prior to Amazon, he spent time in product management roles at early stage Internet startups. Matt earned a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Top 2022 AWS data protection service and cryptography tool launches

Post Syndicated from Marta Taggart original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/top-2022-aws-data-protection-service-and-cryptography-tool-launches/

Given the pace of Amazon Web Services (AWS) innovation, it can be challenging to stay up to date on the latest AWS service and feature launches. AWS provides services and tools to help you protect your data, accounts, and workloads from unauthorized access. AWS data protection services provide encryption capabilities, key management, and sensitive data discovery. Last year, we saw growth and evolution in AWS data protection services as we continue to give customers features and controls to help meet their needs. Protecting data in the AWS Cloud is a top priority because we know you trust us to help protect your most critical and sensitive asset: your data. This post will highlight some of the key AWS data protection launches in the last year that security professionals should be aware of.

AWS Key Management Service
Create and control keys to encrypt or digitally sign your data

In April, AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) launched hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) APIs. This feature introduced the ability to create AWS KMS keys that can be used to generate and verify HMACs. HMACs are a powerful cryptographic building block that incorporate symmetric key material within a hash function to create a unique keyed message authentication code. HMACs provide a fast way to tokenize or sign data such as web API requests, credit card numbers, bank routing information, or personally identifiable information (PII). This technology is used to verify the integrity and authenticity of data and communications. HMACs are often a higher performing alternative to asymmetric cryptographic methods like RSA or elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and should be used when both message senders and recipients can use AWS KMS.

At AWS re:Invent in November, AWS KMS introduced the External Key Store (XKS), a new feature for customers who want to protect their data with encryption keys that are stored in an external key management system under their control. This capability brings new flexibility for customers to encrypt or decrypt data with cryptographic keys, independent authorization, and audit in an external key management system outside of AWS. XKS can help you address your compliance needs where encryption keys for regulated workloads must be outside AWS and solely under your control. To provide customers with a broad range of external key manager options, AWS KMS developed the XKS specification with feedback from leading key management and hardware security module (HSM) manufacturers as well as service providers that can help customers deploy and integrate XKS into their AWS projects.

AWS Nitro System
A combination of dedicated hardware and a lightweight hypervisor enabling faster innovation and enhanced security

In November, we published The Security Design of the AWS Nitro System whitepaper. The AWS Nitro System is a combination of purpose-built server designs, data processors, system management components, and specialized firmware that serves as the underlying virtualization technology that powers all Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances launched since early 2018. This new whitepaper provides you with a detailed design document that covers the inner workings of the AWS Nitro System and how it is used to help secure your most critical workloads. The whitepaper discusses the security properties of the Nitro System, provides a deeper look into how it is designed to eliminate the possibility of AWS operator access to a customer’s EC2 instances, and describes its passive communications design and its change management process. Finally, the paper surveys important aspects of the overall system design of Amazon EC2 that provide mitigations against potential side-channel vulnerabilities that can exist in generic compute environments.

AWS Secrets Manager
Centrally manage the lifecycle of secrets

In February, AWS Secrets Manager added the ability to schedule secret rotations within specific time windows. Previously, Secrets Manager supported automated rotation of secrets within the last 24 hours of a specified rotation interval. This new feature added the ability to limit a given secret rotation to specific hours on specific days of a rotation interval. This helps you avoid having to choose between the convenience of managed rotations and the operational safety of application maintenance windows. In November, Secrets Manager also added the capability to rotate secrets as often as every four hours, while providing the same managed rotation experience.

In May, Secrets Manager started publishing secrets usage metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. With this feature, you have a streamlined way to view how many secrets you are using in Secrets Manager over time. You can also set alarms for an unexpected increase or decrease in number of secrets.

At the end of December, Secrets Manager added support for managed credential rotation for service-linked secrets. This feature helps eliminate the need for you to manage rotation Lambda functions and enables you to set up rotation without additional configuration. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) has integrated with this feature to streamline how you manage your master user password for your RDS database instances. Using this feature can improve your database’s security by preventing the RDS master user password from being visible during the database creation workflow. Amazon RDS fully manages the master user password’s lifecycle and stores it in Secrets Manager whenever your RDS database instances are created, modified, or restored. To learn more about how to use this feature, see Improve security of Amazon RDS master database credentials using AWS Secrets Manager.

AWS Private Certificate Authority
Create private certificates to identify resources and protect data

In September, AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA) launched as a standalone service. AWS Private CA was previously a feature of AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). One goal of this launch was to help customers differentiate between ACM and AWS Private CA. ACM and AWS Private CA have distinct roles in the process of creating and managing the digital certificates used to identify resources and secure network communications over the internet, in the cloud, and on private networks. This launch coincided with the launch of an updated console for AWS Private CA, which includes accessibility improvements to enhance screen reader support and additional tab key navigation for people with motor impairment.

In October, AWS Private CA introduced a short-lived certificate mode, a lower-cost mode of AWS Private CA that is designed for issuing short-lived certificates. With this new mode, public key infrastructure (PKI) administrators, builders, and developers can save money when issuing certificates where a validity period of 7 days or fewer is desired. To learn more about how to use this feature, see How to use AWS Private Certificate Authority short-lived certificate mode.

Additionally, AWS Private CA supported the launches of certificate-based authentication with Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces to remove the logon prompt for the Active Directory domain password. AppStream 2.0 and WorkSpaces certificate-based authentication integrates with AWS Private CA to automatically issue short-lived certificates when users sign in to their sessions. When you configure your private CA as a third-party root CA in Active Directory or as a subordinate to your Active Directory Certificate Services enterprise CA, AppStream 2.0 or WorkSpaces with AWS Private CA can enable rapid deployment of end-user certificates to seamlessly authenticate users. To learn more about how to use this feature, see How to use AWS Private Certificate Authority short-lived certificate mode.

AWS Certificate Manager
Provision and manage SSL/TLS certificates with AWS services and connected resources

In early November, ACM launched the ability to request and use Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) P-256 and P-384 TLS certificates to help secure your network traffic. You can use ACM to request ECDSA certificates and associate the certificates with AWS services like Application Load Balancer or Amazon CloudFront. Previously, you could only request certificates with an RSA 2048 key algorithm from ACM. Now, AWS customers who need to use TLS certificates with at least 120-bit security strength can use these ECDSA certificates to help meet their compliance needs. The ECDSA certificates have a higher security strength—128 bits for P-256 certificates and 192 bits for P-384 certificates—when compared to 112-bit RSA 2048 certificates that you can also issue from ACM. The smaller file footprint of ECDSA certificates makes them ideal for use cases with limited processing capacity, such as small Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Amazon Macie
Discover and protect your sensitive data at scale

Amazon Macie introduced two major features at AWS re:Invent. The first is a new capability that allows for one-click, temporary retrieval of up to 10 samples of sensitive data found in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). With this new capability, you can more readily view and understand which contents of an S3 object were identified as sensitive, so you can review, validate, and quickly take action as needed without having to review every object that a Macie job returned. Sensitive data samples captured with this new capability are encrypted by using customer-managed AWS KMS keys and are temporarily viewable within the Amazon Macie console after retrieval.

Additionally, Amazon Macie introduced automated sensitive data discovery, a new feature that provides continual, cost-efficient, organization-wide visibility into where sensitive data resides across your Amazon S3 estate. With this capability, Macie automatically samples and analyzes objects across your S3 buckets, inspecting them for sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII) and financial data; builds an interactive data map of where your sensitive data in S3 resides across accounts; and provides a sensitivity score for each bucket. Macie uses multiple automated techniques, including resource clustering by attributes such as bucket name, file types, and prefixes, to minimize the data scanning needed to uncover sensitive data in your S3 buckets. This helps you continuously identify and remediate data security risks without manual configuration and lowers the cost to monitor for and respond to data security risks.

Support for new open source encryption libraries

In February, we announced the availability of s2n-quic, an open source Rust implementation of the QUIC protocol, in our AWS encryption open source libraries. QUIC is a transport layer network protocol used by many web services to provide lower latencies than classic TCP. AWS has long supported open source encryption libraries for network protocols; in 2015 we introduced s2n-tls as a library for implementing TLS over HTTP. The name s2n is short for signal to noise and is a nod to the act of encryption—disguising meaningful signals, like your critical data, as seemingly random noise. Similar to s2n-tls, s2n-quic is designed to be small and fast, with simplicity as a priority. It is written in Rust, so it has some of the benefits of that programming language, such as performance, threads, and memory safety.

Cryptographic computing for AWS Clean Rooms (preview)

At re:Invent, we also announced AWS Clean Rooms, currently in preview, which includes a cryptographic computing feature that allows you to run a subset of queries on encrypted data. Clean rooms help customers and their partners to match, analyze, and collaborate on their combined datasets—without sharing or revealing underlying data. If you have data handling policies that require encryption of sensitive data, you can pre-encrypt your data by using a common collaboration-specific encryption key so that data is encrypted even when queries are run. With cryptographic computing, data that is used in collaborative computations remains encrypted at rest, in transit, and in use (while being processed).

If you’re looking for more opportunities to learn about AWS security services, read our AWS re:Invent 2022 Security recap post or watch the Security, Identity, and Compliance playlist.

Looking ahead in 2023

With AWS, you control your data by using powerful AWS services and tools to determine where your data is stored, how it is secured, and who has access to it. In 2023, we will further the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.

You can join us at our security learning conference, AWS re:Inforce 2023, in Anaheim, CA, June 13–14, for the latest advancements in AWS security, compliance, identity, and privacy solutions.

Stay updated on launches by subscribing to the AWS What’s New RSS feed and reading the AWS Security Blog.

 
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Author

Marta Taggart

Marta is a Seattle-native and Senior Product Marketing Manager in AWS Security Product Marketing, where she focuses on data protection services. Outside of work you’ll find her trying to convince Jack, her rescue dog, not to chase squirrels and crows (with limited success).

Introducing the Security Design of the AWS Nitro System whitepaper

Post Syndicated from J.D. Bean original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/introducing-the-security-design-of-the-aws-nitro-system-whitepaper/

AWS recently released a whitepaper on the Security Design of the AWS Nitro System. The Nitro System is a combination of purpose-built server designs, data processors, system management components, and specialized firmware that serves as the underlying virtualization technology that powers all Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances launched since early 2018. With the Nitro System, AWS undertook an effort to reimagine the architecture of virtualization to deliver security, isolation, performance, cost savings, and a pace of innovation that our customers require.

This whitepaper is a detailed design document on the inner workings of the AWS Nitro System, and how we use it to help secure your most critical workloads. This is the first time that AWS has provided such a detailed design document on the Nitro System and how it offers a no-operator access design and strong tenant isolation. The whitepaper describes the security design of the Nitro System in detail to help you evaluate Amazon EC2 for your sensitive workloads.

Three key components of the Nitro System are used to implement this design:

  • Purpose-built Nitro Cards – Hardware devices designed by AWS that provide overall system control and I/O virtualization that is independent of the main system board with its CPUs and memory.
  • Nitro Security Chip – Enables a secure boot process for the overall system based on a hardware root of trust, the ability to offer bare metal instances, and defense-in-depth that offers protection to the server from unauthorized modification of system firmware.
  • Nitro Hypervisor – A deliberately minimized and firmware-like hypervisor designed to provide strong resource isolation, and performance that is nearly indistinguishable from a bare metal server.

The whitepaper describes the fundamental architectural change introduced by the Nitro System compared to previous approaches to virtualization. It discusses the three key components of the Nitro System, and provides a demonstration of how these components work together by walking through what happens when a new Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume is added to a running EC2 instance. The whitepaper also discusses how the Nitro System is designed to eliminate the possibility of administrator access to an EC2 server, the overall passive communications design of the Nitro System, and the Nitro System change management process. Finally, the paper surveys important aspects of the EC2 system design that provide mitigations against potential side-channel issues that can arise in compute environments.

The whitepaper dives deep into each of these considerations, offering a detailed picture of the Nitro System security design. For more information about cloud security at AWS, contact us.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

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J.D. Bean

J.D. is a Principal Security Architect for Amazon EC2 based out of New York City. His interests include security, privacy, and compliance. He is passionate about his work enabling AWS customers’ successful cloud journeys. J.D. holds a Bachelor of Arts from The George Washington University and a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law.

AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Control without compromise

Post Syndicated from Matt Garman original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-digital-sovereignty-pledge-control-without-compromise/

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We’ve always believed that for the cloud to realize its full potential it would be essential that customers have control over their data. Giving customers this sovereignty has been a priority for AWS since the very beginning when we were the only major cloud provider to allow customers to control the location and movement of their data. The importance of this foundation has only grown over the last 16 years as the cloud has become mainstream, and governments and standards bodies continue to develop security, data protection, and privacy regulations.

Today, having control over digital assets, or digital sovereignty, is more important than ever.

As we’ve innovated and expanded to offer the world’s most capable, scalable, and reliable cloud, we’ve continued to prioritize making sure customers are in control and able to meet regulatory requirements anywhere they operate. What this looks like varies greatly across industries and countries. In many places around the world, like in Europe, digital sovereignty policies are evolving rapidly. Customers are facing an incredible amount of complexity, and over the last 18 months, many have told us they are concerned that they will have to choose between the full power of AWS and a feature-limited sovereign cloud solution that could hamper their ability to innovate, transform, and grow. We firmly believe that customers shouldn’t have to make this choice.

This is why today we’re introducing the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge—our commitment to offering all AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.

AWS already offers a range of data protection features, accreditations, and contractual commitments that give customers control over where they locate their data, who can access it, and how it is used. We pledge to expand on these capabilities to allow customers around the world to meet their digital sovereignty requirements without compromising on the capabilities, performance, innovation, and scale of the AWS Cloud. At the same time, we will continue to work to deeply understand the evolving needs and requirements of both customers and regulators, and rapidly adapt and innovate to meet them.

Sovereign-by-design

Our approach to delivering on this pledge is to continue to make the AWS Cloud sovereign-by-design—as it has been from day one. Early in our history, we received a lot of input from customers in industries like financial services and healthcare—customers who are among the most security- and data privacy-conscious organizations in the world—about what data protection features and controls they would need to use the cloud. We developed AWS encryption and key management capabilities, achieved compliance accreditations, and made contractual commitments to satisfy the needs of our customers. As customers’ requirements evolve, we evolve and expand the AWS Cloud. A couple of recent examples include the data residency guardrails we added to AWS Control Tower (a service for governing AWS environments) late last year, which give customers even more control over the physical location of where customer data is stored and processed. In February 2022, we announced AWS services that adhere to the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) Data Protection Code of Conduct, giving customers an independent verification and an added level of assurance that our services can be used in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These capabilities and assurances are available to all AWS customers.

We pledge to continue to invest in an ambitious roadmap of capabilities for data residency, granular access restriction, encryption, and resilience:

1. Control over the location of your data

Customers have always controlled the location of their data with AWS. For example, currently in Europe, customers have the choice to deploy their data into any of eight existing Regions. We commit to deliver even more services and features to protect our customers’ data. We further commit to expanding on our existing capabilities to provide even more fine-grained data residency controls and transparency. We will also expand data residency controls for operational data, such as identity and billing information.

2. Verifiable control over data access

We have designed and delivered first-of-a-kind innovation to restrict access to customer data. The AWS Nitro System, which is the foundation of AWS computing services, uses specialized hardware and software to protect data from outside access during processing on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). By providing a strong physical and logical security boundary, Nitro is designed to enforce restrictions so that nobody, including anyone in AWS, can access customer workloads on EC2. We commit to continue to build additional access restrictions that limit all access to customer data unless requested by the customer or a partner they trust.

3. The ability to encrypt everything everywhere

Currently, we give customers features and controls to encrypt data, whether in transit, at rest, or in memory. All AWS services already support encryption, with most also supporting encryption with customer managed keys that are inaccessible to AWS. We commit to continue to innovate and invest in additional controls for sovereignty and encryption features so that our customers can encrypt everything everywhere with encryption keys managed inside or outside the AWS Cloud.

4. Resilience of the cloud

It is not possible to achieve digital sovereignty without resiliency and survivability. Control over workloads and high availability are essential in the case of events like supply chain disruption, network interruption, and natural disaster. Currently, AWS delivers the highest network availability of any cloud provider. Each AWS Region is comprised of multiple Availability Zones (AZs), which are fully isolated infrastructure partitions. To better isolate issues and achieve high availability, customers can partition applications across multiple AZs in the same AWS Region. For customers that are running workloads on premises or in intermittently connected or remote use cases, we offer services that provide specific capabilities for offline data and remote compute and storage. We commit to continue to enhance our range of sovereign and resilient options, allowing customers to sustain operations through disruption or disconnection.

Earning trust through transparency and assurances

At AWS, earning customer trust is the foundation of our business. We understand that protecting customer data is key to achieving this. We also know that trust must continue to be earned through transparency. We are transparent about how our services process and transfer data. We will continue to challenge requests for customer data from law enforcement and government agencies. We provide guidance, compliance evidence, and contractual commitments so that our customers can use AWS services to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. We commit to continuing to provide the transparency and business flexibility needed to meet evolving privacy and sovereignty laws.

Navigating changes as a team

Helping customers protect their data in a world with changing regulations, technology, and risks takes teamwork. We would never expect our customers to go it alone. Our trusted partners play a prominent role in bringing solutions to customers. For example, in Germany, T-Systems (part of Deutsche Telekom) offers Data Protection as a Managed Service on AWS. It provides guidance to ensure data residency controls are properly configured, offering services for the configuration and management of encryption keys and expertise to help guide their customers in addressing their digital sovereignty requirements in the AWS Cloud. We are doubling down with local partners that our customers trust to help address digital sovereignty requirements.

We are committed to helping our customers meet digital sovereignty requirements. We will continue to innovate sovereignty features, controls, and assurances within the global AWS Cloud and deliver them without compromise to the full power of AWS.

 
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Matt Garman

Matt Garman

Matt is currently the Senior Vice President of AWS Sales, Marketing and Global Services at AWS, and also sits on Amazon’s executive leadership S-Team. Matt joined Amazon in 2006, and has held several leadership positions in AWS over that time. Matt previously served as Vice President of the Amazon EC2 and Compute Services businesses for AWS for over 10 years. Matt was responsible for P&L, product management, and engineering and operations for all compute and storage services in AWS. He started at Amazon when AWS first launched in 2006 and served as one of the first product managers, helping to launch the initial set of AWS services. Prior to Amazon, he spent time in product management roles at early stage Internet startups. Matt earned a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

 


French version

AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: le contrôle sans compromis

Nous avons toujours pensé que pour que le cloud révèle son entier potentiel, il était essentiel que les clients aient le contrôle de leurs données. Garantir à nos clients cette souveraineté a été la priorité d’AWS depuis l’origine, lorsque nous étions le seul grand fournisseur de cloud à permettre aux clients de contrôler la localisation et le flux de leurs données. L’importance de cette démarche n’a cessé de croître ces 16 dernières années, à mesure que le cloud s’est démocratisé et que les gouvernements et les organismes de régulation ont développé des réglementations en matière de sécurité, de protection des données et de confidentialité.

Aujourd’hui, le contrôle des ressources numériques, ou souveraineté numérique, est plus important que jamais.

Tout en innovant et en nous développant pour offrir le cloud le plus performant, évolutif et fiable au monde, nous avons continué à ériger comme priorité la garantie que nos clients gardent le contrôle et soient en mesure de répondre aux exigences réglementaires partout où ils opèrent. Ces exigences varient considérablement selon les secteurs et les pays. Dans de nombreuses régions du monde, comme en Europe, les politiques de souveraineté numérique évoluent rapidement. Les clients sont confrontés à une incroyable complexité. Au cours des dix-huit derniers mois, ils nous ont rapporté qu’ils craignaient de devoir choisir entre les vastes possibilités offertes par les services d’AWS et une solution aux fonctionnalités limitées qui pourrait entraver leur capacité à innover, à se transformer et à se développer. Nous sommes convaincus que les clients ne devraient pas avoir à faire un tel choix.

C’est pourquoi nous présentons aujourd’hui l’AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge – notre engagement à offrir à tous les clients AWS l’ensemble le plus avancé d’outils et de fonctionnalités de contrôle disponibles dans le cloud au service de la souveraineté.

AWS propose déjà une série de fonctionnalités de protection des données, de certifications et d’engagements contractuels qui donnent à nos clients le plein contrôle de la localisation de leurs données, de leur accès et de leur utilisation. Nous nous engageons à développer ces capacités pour permettre à nos clients du monde entier de répondre à leurs exigences en matière de souveraineté numérique, sans faire de compromis sur les capacités, les performances, l’innovation et la portée du cloud AWS. En parallèle, nous continuerons à travailler pour comprendre en profondeur l’évolution des besoins et des exigences des clients et des régulateurs, et nous nous adapterons et innoverons rapidement pour y répondre.

Souverain dès la conception

Pour respecter l’AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, notre approche est de continuer à rendre le cloud AWS souverain dès sa conception, comme il l’a été dès le premier jour. Aux débuts de notre histoire, nous recevions de nombreux commentaires de nos clients de secteurs tels que les services financiers et la santé – des clients qui comptent parmi les organisations les plus soucieuses de la sécurité et de la confidentialité des données dans le monde – sur les fonctionnalités et les contrôles de protection des données dont ils auraient besoin pour leur utilisation du cloud. Nous avons développé des compétences en matière de chiffrement et de gestion des données, obtenu des certifications de conformité et pris des engagements contractuels pour répondre aux besoins de nos clients. Nous développons le cloud AWS à mesure que les exigences des clients évoluent. Nous pouvons citer, parmi les exemples récents, les data residency guardrails (les garde-fous de la localisation des données) que nous avons ajoutés en fin d’année dernière à l’AWS Control Tower (un service de gestion des environnements AWS) et qui donnent aux clients davantage de contrôle sur l’emplacement physique de leurs données, où elles sont stockées et traitées. En février 2022, nous avons annoncé de nouveaux services AWS adhérant au Code de Conduite sur la protection des données de l’association CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE)). Ils apportent à nos clients une vérification indépendante et un niveau de garantie supplémentaire attestant que nos services peuvent être utilisés conformément au Règlement général sur la protection des données (RGPD). Ces capacités et ces garanties sont disponibles pour tous les clients d’AWS.

Nous nous engageons à poursuivre nos investissements conformément à une ambitieuse feuille de route pour le, , développement de capacités au service de la localisation des données, de la restriction d’accès granulaire (pratique consistant à accorder à des utilisateurs spécifiques différents niveaux d’accès à une ressource particulière), de chiffrement et de résilience :

1. Contrôle de l’emplacement de vos données

AWS a toujours permis à ses clients de contrôler l’emplacement de leurs données. Aujourd’hui en Europe, par exemple, les clients ont le choix de déployer leurs données dans l’une des huit Régions existantes. Nous nous engageons à fournir encore plus de services et de capacités pour protéger les données de nos clients. Nous nous engageons également à développer nos capacités existantes pour fournir des contrôles de localisation des données encore plus précis et transparents. Nous allons également étendre les contrôles de localisation des données pour les données opérationnelles, telles que les informations relatives à l’identité et à la facturation.

2. Contrôle fiable de l’accès aux données

Nous avons conçu et fourni une innovation unique en son genre pour restreindre l’accès aux données clients. Le système AWS Nitro, qui constitue la base des services informatiques d’AWS, utilise du matériel et des logiciels spécialisés pour protéger les données contre tout accès extérieur pendant leur traitement sur les serveurs EC2. En fournissant une solide barrière de sécurité physique et logique, Nitro est conçu pour empêcher, y compris au sein d’AWS, l’accès à ces données sur EC2. Nous nous engageons à continuer à développer des restrictions d’accès supplémentaires qui limitent tout accès aux données de nos clients, sauf indication contraire de la part du client ou de l’un de ses prestataires de confiance.

3. La possibilité de tout chiffrer, partout

Aujourd’hui, nous offrons à nos clients des fonctionnalités et des outils de contrôle pour chiffrer les données, qu’elles soient en transit, au repos ou en mémoire. Tous les services AWS prennent déjà en charge le chiffrement, la plupart permettant également le chiffrement sur des clés gérées par le client et inaccessibles à AWS. Nous nous engageons à continuer d’innover et d’investir dans des outils de contrôle au service de la souveraineté et des fonctionnalités de chiffrement supplémentaires afin que nos clients puissent chiffrer l’ensemble de leurs données partout, avec des clés de chiffrement gérées à l’intérieur ou à l’extérieur du cloud AWS.

4. La résilience du cloud

La souveraineté numérique est impossible sans résilience et sans capacités de continuité d’activité lors de crise majeure. Le contrôle des charges de travail et la haute disponibilité de réseau sont essentiels en cas d’événements comme une rupture de la chaîne d’approvisionnement, une interruption du réseau ou encore une catastrophe naturelle. Actuellement, AWS offre la plus haute disponibilité de réseau de tous les fournisseurs de cloud. Chaque Région AWS est composée de plusieurs zones de disponibilité (AZ), qui sont des portions d’infrastructure totalement isolées. Pour mieux isoler les difficultés et obtenir une haute disponibilité de réseau, les clients peuvent répartir les applications sur plusieurs zones dans la même Région AWS. Pour les clients qui exécutent des charges de travail sur place ou dans des cas d’utilisation à distance ou connectés par intermittence, nous proposons des services qui offrent des capacités spécifiques pour les données hors ligne, le calcul et le stockage à distance. Nous nous engageons à continuer d’améliorer notre gamme d’options souveraines et résilientes, permettant aux clients de maintenir leurs activités en cas de perturbation ou de déconnexion.

Gagner la confiance par la transparence et les garanties

Chez AWS, gagner la confiance de nos clients est le fondement de notre activité. Nous savons que la protection des données de nos clients est essentielle pour y parvenir. Nous savons également que leur confiance s’obtient par la transparence. Nous sommes transparents sur la manière dont nos services traitent et transfèrent leurs données. Nous continuerons à nous contester les demandes de données des clients émanant des autorités judiciaires et des organismes gouvernementaux. Nous fournissons des conseils, des preuves de conformité et des engagements contractuels afin que nos clients puissent utiliser les services AWS pour répondre aux exigences de conformité et de réglementation. Nous nous engageons à continuer à fournir la transparence et la flexibilité commerciale nécessaires pour répondre à l’évolution du cadre réglementaire relatif à la confidentialité et à la souveraineté des données.

Naviguer en équipe dans un monde en perpétuel changement

Aider les clients à protéger leurs données dans un monde où les réglementations, les technologies et les risques évoluent nécessite un travail d’équipe. Nous ne pouvons-nous résoudre à ce que nos clients relèvent seuls ces défis. Nos partenaires de confiance jouent un rôle prépondérant dans l’apport de solutions aux clients. Par exemple, en Allemagne, T-Systems (qui fait partie de Deutsche Telekom) propose la protection des données en tant que service géré sur AWS. L’entreprise fournit des conseils pour s’assurer que les contrôles de localisation des données sont correctement configurés, offrant des services pour la configuration en question, la gestion des clés de chiffrements et une expertise pour aider leurs clients à répondre à leurs exigences de souveraineté numérique dans le cloud AWS. Nous redoublons d’efforts avec les partenaires locaux en qui nos clients ont confiance pour les aider à répondre à ces exigences de souveraineté numérique.

Nous nous engageons à aider nos clients à répondre aux exigences de souveraineté numérique. Nous continuerons d’innover en matière de fonctionnalités, de contrôles et de garanties de souveraineté dans le cloud mondial d’AWS, tout en fournissant sans compromis et sans restriction la pleine puissance d’AWS.


German version

AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Kontrolle ohne Kompromisse

Wir waren immer der Meinung, dass die Cloud ihr volles Potenzial nur dann erschließen kann, wenn Kunden die volle Kontrolle über ihre Daten haben. Diese Datensouveränität des Kunden genießt bei AWS schon seit den Anfängen der Cloud Priorität, als wir der einzige große Anbieter waren, bei dem Kunden sowohl Kontrolle über den Speicherort als auch über die Übertragung ihrer Daten hatten. Die Bedeutung dieser Grundsätze hat über die vergangenen 16 Jahre stetig zugenommen: Die Cloud ist im Mainstream angekommen, sowohl Gesetzgeber als auch Regulatoren entwickeln ihre Vorgaben zu IT-Sicherheit und Datenschutz stetig weiter.

Kontrolle bzw. Souveränität über digitale Ressourcen ist heute wichtiger denn je.

Unsere Innovationen und Entwicklungen haben stets darauf abgezielt, unseren Kunden eine Cloud zur Verfügung zu stellen, die skalierend und zugleich verlässlich global nutzbar ist. Dies beinhaltet auch unseren Kunden die Kontrolle zu gewährleisten die sie benötigen, damit sie alle ihre regulatorischen Anforderungen erfüllen können. Regulatorische Anforderungen sind länder- und sektorspezifisch. Vielerorts – wie auch in Europa – entstehen neue Anforderungen und Regularien zu digitaler Souveränität, die sich rasant entwickeln. Kunden sehen sich einer hohen Anzahl verschiedenster Regelungen ausgesetzt, die eine enorme Komplexität mit sich bringen. Innerhalb der letzten achtzehn Monate haben sich viele unserer Kunden daher mit der Sorge an uns gewandt, vor eine Wahl gestellt zu werden: Entweder die volle Funktionalität und Innovationskraft von AWS zu nutzen, oder auf funktionseingeschränkte „souveräne“ Cloud-Lösungen zurückzugreifen, deren Kapazität für Innovation, Transformation, Sicherheit und Wachstum aber limitiert ist. Wir sind davon überzeugt, dass Kunden nicht vor diese „Wahl“ gestellt werden sollten.

Deswegen stellen wir heute den „AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge“ vor – unser Versprechen allen AWS Kunden, ohne Kompromisse die fortschrittlichsten Souveränitäts-Kontrollen und Funktionen in der Cloud anzubieten.

AWS bietet schon heute eine breite Palette an Datenschutz-Funktionen, Zertifizierungen und vertraglichen Zusicherungen an, die Kunden Kontrollmechanismen darüber geben, wo ihre Daten gespeichert sind, wer darauf Zugriff erhält und wie sie verwendet werden. Wir werden diese Palette so erweitern, dass Kunden überall auf der Welt, ihre Anforderungen an Digitale Souveränität erfüllen können, ohne auf Funktionsumfang, Leistungsfähigkeit, Innovation und Skalierbarkeit der AWS Cloud verzichten zu müssen. Gleichzeitig werden wir weiterhin daran arbeiten, unser Angebot flexibel und innovativ an die sich weiter wandelnden Bedürfnisse und Anforderungen von Kunden und Regulatoren anzupassen.

Sovereign-by-design

Wir werden den „AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge“ so umsetzen, wie wir das seit dem ersten Tag machen und die AWS Cloud gemäß unseres „sovereign-by-design“ Ansatz fortentwickeln. Wir haben von Anfang an, durch entsprechende Funktions- und Kontrollmechanismen für spezielle IT-Sicherheits- und Datenschutzanforderungen aus den verschiedensten regulierten Sektoren Lösungen gefunden, die besonders sensiblen Branchen wie beispielsweise dem Finanzsektor oder dem Gesundheitswesen frühzeitig ermöglichten, die Cloud zu nutzen. Auf dieser Basis haben wir die AWS Verschlüsselungs- und Schlüsselmanagement-Funktionen entwickelt, Compliance-Akkreditierungen erhalten und vertragliche Zusicherungen gegeben, welche die Bedürfnisse unserer Kunden bedienen. Dies ist ein stetiger Prozess, um die AWS Cloud auf sich verändernde Kundenanforderungen anzupassen. Ein Beispiel dafür sind die Data Residency Guardrails, um die wir AWS Control Tower Ende letzten Jahres erweitert haben. Sie geben Kunden die volle Kontrolle über die physikalische Verortung ihrer Daten zu Speicherungs- und Verarbeitungszwecken. Dieses Jahr haben wir einen Katalog von AWS Diensten veröffentlicht, die den Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) erfüllen. Damit verfügen Kunden über eine unabhängige Verifizierung und zusätzliche Versicherung, dass unsere Dienste im Einklang mit der DSGVO verwendet werden können. Diese Instrumente und Nachweise stehen schon heute allen AWS Kunden zur Verfügung.

Wir haben uns ehrgeizige Ziele für unsere Roadmap gesetzt und investieren kontinuierlich in Funktionen für die Verortung von Daten (Datenresidenz), granulare Zugriffsbeschränkungen, Verschlüsselung und Resilienz:

1. Kontrolle über den Ort der Datenspeicherung

Bei AWS hatten Kunden immer schon die Kontrolle über Datenresidenz, also den Ort der Datenspeicherung. Aktuell können Kunden ihre Daten z.B. in 8 bestehenden Regionen innerhalb Europas speichern, von denen 6 innerhalb der Europäischen Union liegen. Wir verpflichten uns dazu, noch mehr Dienste und Funktionen zur Verfügung zustellen, die dem Schutz der Daten unserer Kunden dienen. Ebenso verpflichten wir uns, noch granularere Kontrollen für Datenresidenz und Transparenz auszubauen. Wir werden auch zusätzliche Kontrollen für Daten einführen, die insbesondere die Bereiche Identitäts- und Abrechnungs-Management umfassen.

2. Verifizierbare Kontrolle über Datenzugriffe

Mit dem AWS Nitro System haben wir ein innovatives System entwickelt, welches unberechtigte Zugriffsmöglichkeiten auf Kundendaten verhindert: Das Nitro System ist die Grundlage der AWS Computing Services (EC2). Es verwendet spezialisierte Hardware und Software, um den Schutz von Kundendaten während der Verarbeitung auf EC2 zu gewährleisten. Nitro basiert auf einer starken physikalischen und logischen Sicherheitsabgrenzung und realisiert damit Zugriffsbeschränkungen, die unautorisierte Zugriffe auf Kundendaten auf EC2 unmöglich machen – das gilt auch für AWS als Betreiber. Wir werden darüber hinaus für weitere AWS Services zusätzliche Mechanismen entwickeln, die weiterhin potentielle Zugriffe auf Kundendaten verhindern und nur in Fällen zulassen, die explizit durch Kunden oder Partner ihres Vertrauens genehmigt worden sind.

3. Möglichkeit der Datenverschlüsselung überall und jederzeit

Gegenwärtig können Kunden Funktionen und Kontrollen verwenden, die wir zur Verschlüsselung von Daten während der Übertragung, persistenten Speicherungen oder Verarbeitung in flüchtigem Speicher anbieten. Alle AWS Dienste unterstützen schon heute Datenverschlüsselung, die meisten davon auf Basis der Customer Managed Keys – d.h. Schlüssel, die von Kunden verwaltet werden und für AWS nicht zugänglich sind. Wir werden auch in diesem Bereich weiter investieren und Innovationen vorantreiben. Es wird zusätzliche Kontrollen für Souveränität und Verschlüsselung geben, damit unsere Kunden alles jederzeit und überall verschlüsseln können – und das mit Schlüsseln, die entweder durch AWS oder durch den Kunden selbst bzw. ausgewählte Partner verwaltet werden können.

4. Resilienz der Cloud

Digitale Souveränität lässt sich nicht ohne Ausfallsicherheit und Überlebensfähigkeit herstellen. Die Kontrolle über Workloads und hohe Verfügbarkeit z.B. in Fällen von Lieferkettenstörungen, Netzwerkausfällen und Naturkatastrophen ist essenziell. Aktuell bietet AWS die höchste Netzwerk-Verfügbarkeit unter allen Cloud-Anbietern. Jede AWS Region besteht aus mehreren Availability Zones (AZs), die jeweils vollständig isolierte Partitionen unserer Infrastruktur sind. Um Probleme besser zu isolieren und eine hohe Verfügbarkeit zu erreichen, können Kunden Anwendungen auf mehrere AZs in derselben Region verteilen. Kunden, die Workloads on-premises oder in Szenarien mit sporadischer Netzwerk-Anbindung betreiben, bieten wir Dienste an, welche auf Offline-Daten und Remote Compute und Storage Anwendungsfälle angepasst sind. Wir werden unser Angebot an souveränen und resilienten Optionen ausbauen und fortentwickeln, damit Kunden den Betrieb ihrer Workloads auch bei Trennungs- und Disruptionsszenarien aufrechterhalten können.

Vertrauen durch Transparenz und Zusicherungen

Der Aufbau eines Vertrauensverhältnisses mit unseren Kunden, ist die Grundlage unserer Geschäftsbeziehung bei AWS. Wir wissen, dass der Schutz der Daten unserer Kunden der Schlüssel dazu ist. Wir wissen auch, dass Vertrauen durch fortwährende Transparenz verdient und aufgebaut wird. Wir bieten schon heute transparenten Einblick, wie unsere Dienste Daten verarbeiten und übertragen. Wir werden auch in Zukunft Anfragen nach Kundendaten durch Strafverfolgungsbehörden und Regierungsorganisationen konsequent anfechten. Wir bieten Rat, Compliance-Nachweise und vertragliche Zusicherungen an, damit unsere Kunden AWS Dienste nutzen und gleichzeitig ihre Compliance und regulatorischen Anforderungen erfüllen können. Wir werden auch in Zukunft die Transparenz und Flexibilität an den Tag legen, um auf sich weiterentwickelnde Datenschutz- und Soveränitäts-Regulierungen passende Antworten zu finden.

Den Wandel als Team bewältigen

Regulatorik, Technologie und Risiken sind stetigem Wandel unterworfen: Kunden dabei zu helfen, ihre Daten in diesem Umfeld zu schützen, ist Teamwork. Wir würden nie erwarten, dass unsere Kunden das alleine bewältigen müssen. Unsere Partner genießen hohes Vertrauen und spielen eine wichtige Rolle dabei, Lösungen für Kunden zu entwickeln. Zum Beispiel bietet T-Systems in Deutschland Data Protection as a Managed Service auf AWS an. Das Angebot umfasst Hilfestellungen bei der Konfiguration von Kontrollen zur Datenresidenz, Zusatzdienste im Zusammenhang mit der Schlüsselverwaltung für kryptographische Verfahren und Rat bei der Erfüllung von Anforderungen zu Datensouveränität in der AWS Cloud. Wir werden die Zusammenarbeit mit lokalen Partnern, die besonderes Vertrauen bei unseren gemeinsamen Kunden genießen, intensivieren, um bei der Erfüllung der Digitalen Souveräntitätsanforderungen zu unterstützen.

Wir verpflichten uns dazu unseren Kunden bei der Erfüllung ihre Anforderungen an digitale Souveränität zu helfen. Wir werden weiterhin Souveränitäts-Funktionen, Kontrollen und Zusicherungen für die globale AWS Cloud entwickeln, die das gesamte Leistungsspektrum von AWS erschließen.


Italian version

AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Controllo senza compromessi

Abbiamo sempre creduto che, affinché il cloud possa realizzare in pieno il potenziale, sia essenziale che i clienti abbiano il controllo dei propri dati. Offrire ai clienti questa “sovranità” è sin dall’inizio una priorità per AWS, da quando eravamo l’unico grande cloud provider a consentire ai clienti di controllare la localizzazione e lo spostamento dei propri dati. L’importanza di questo principio è aumentata negli ultimi 16 anni, man mano che il cloud ha iniziato a diffondersi e i governi e gli organismi di standardizzazione hanno continuato a sviluppare normative in materia di sicurezza, protezione dei dati e privacy.

Oggi, avere il controllo sulle risorse digitali, sulla sovranità digitale, è più importante che mai.

Nell’innovare ed espandere l’offerta cloud più completa, scalabile e affidabile al mondo, la nostra priorità è stata assicurarci che i clienti – ovunque operino – abbiano il controllo e siano in grado di soddisfare i requisiti normativi. Il contesto varia notevolmente tra i settori e i paesi. In molti luoghi del mondo, come in Europa, le politiche di sovranità digitale si stanno evolvendo rapidamente. I clienti stanno affrontando un crescente livello di complessità, e negli ultimi diciotto mesi molti di essi ci hanno detto di essere preoccupati di dover scegliere tra usare AWS in tutta la sua potenza e una soluzione cloud sovrana con funzionalità limitate che potrebbe ostacolare la loro capacità di innovazione, trasformazione e crescita. Crediamo fermamente che i clienti non debbano fare questa scelta.

Ecco perché oggi presentiamo l’AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, il nostro impegno a offrire a tutti i clienti AWS l’insieme più avanzato di controlli e funzionalità sulla sovranità digitale disponibili nel cloud.

AWS offre già una gamma di funzionalità di protezione dei dati, accreditamenti e impegni contrattuali che consentono ai clienti di controllare la localizzazione, l’accesso e l’utilizzo dei propri dati. Ci impegniamo a espandere queste funzionalità per consentire ai clienti di tutto il mondo di soddisfare i propri requisiti di sovranità digitale senza compromettere le capacità, le prestazioni, l’innovazione e la scalabilità del cloud AWS. Allo stesso tempo, continueremo a lavorare per comprendere a fondo le esigenze e i requisiti in evoluzione sia dei clienti che delle autorità di regolamentazione, adattandoci e innovando rapidamente per soddisfarli.

Sovereign-by-design

Il nostro approccio per mantenere questo impegno è quello di continuare a rendere il cloud AWS “sovereign-by-design”, come è stato sin dal primo giorno. All’inizio della nostra storia, abbiamo ricevuto da clienti in settori come quello finanziario e sanitario – che sono tra le organizzazioni più attente al mondo alla sicurezza e alla privacy dei dati – molti input sulle funzionalità e sui controlli relativi alla protezione dei dati di cui necessitano per utilizzare il cloud. Abbiamo sviluppato le funzionalità di crittografia e gestione delle chiavi di AWS, ottenuto accreditamenti di conformità e preso impegni contrattuali per soddisfare le esigenze dei nostri clienti. Con l’evolversi delle loro esigenze, sviluppiamo ed espandiamo il cloud AWS.

Un paio di esempi recenti includono i data residency guardrail che abbiamo aggiunto a AWS Control Tower (un servizio per la gestione degli ambienti in AWS) alla fine dell’anno scorso, che offrono ai clienti un controllo ancora maggiore sulla posizione fisica in cui i dati dei clienti vengono archiviati ed elaborati. A febbraio 2022 abbiamo annunciato i servizi AWS che aderiscono al Codice di condotta sulla protezione dei dati dei servizi di infrastruttura cloud in Europa (CISPE), offrendo ai clienti una verifica indipendente e un ulteriore livello di garanzia che i nostri servizi possano essere utilizzati in conformità con il Regolamento generale sulla protezione dei dati (GDPR). Queste funzionalità e garanzie sono disponibili per tutti i clienti AWS.

Ci impegniamo a continuare a investire in una roadmap ambiziosa di funzionalità per la residenza dei dati, la restrizione granulare dell’accesso, la crittografia e la resilienza:

1. Controllo della localizzazione dei tuoi dati

I clienti hanno sempre controllato la localizzazione dei propri dati con AWS. Ad esempio, attualmente in Europa i clienti possono scegliere di distribuire i propri dati attraverso una delle otto Region AWS disponibili. Ci impegniamo a fornire ancora più servizi e funzionalità per proteggere i dati dei nostri clienti e ad espandere le nostre capacità esistenti per fornire controlli e trasparenza ancora più dettagliati sulla residenza dei dati. Estenderemo inoltre anche i controlli relativi ai dati operativi, come le informazioni su identità e fatturazione.

2. Controllo verificabile sull’accesso ai dati

Abbiamo progettato e realizzato un’innovazione unica nel suo genere per limitare l’accesso ai dati dei clienti. Il sistema AWS Nitro, che è alla base dei servizi informatici di AWS, utilizza hardware e software specializzati per proteggere i dati dall’accesso esterno durante l’elaborazione su EC2. Fornendo un solido limite di sicurezza fisico e logico, Nitro è progettato per applicare restrizioni in modo che nessuno, nemmeno in AWS, possa accedere ai carichi di lavoro dei clienti su EC2. Ci impegniamo a continuare a creare ulteriori restrizioni di accesso che limitino tutti gli accessi ai dati dei clienti, a meno che non sia richiesto dal cliente o da un partner di loro fiducia.

3. La capacità di criptare tutto e ovunque

Attualmente, offriamo ai clienti funzionalità e controlli per criptare i dati, che siano questi in transito, a riposo o in memoria. Tutti i servizi AWS già supportano la crittografia, e la maggior parte supporta anche la crittografia con chiavi gestite dal cliente, non accessibili per AWS. Ci impegniamo a continuare a innovare e investire in controlli aggiuntivi per la sovranità e le funzionalità di crittografia in modo che i nostri clienti possano criptare tutto e ovunque con chiavi di crittografia gestite all’interno o all’esterno del cloud AWS.

4. Resilienza del cloud

Non è possibile raggiungere la sovranità digitale senza resilienza e affidabilità. Il controllo dei carichi di lavoro e l’elevata disponibilità sono essenziali in caso di eventi come l’interruzione della catena di approvvigionamento, l’interruzione della rete e i disastri naturali. Attualmente AWS offre il più alto livello di disponibilità di rete rispetto a qualsiasi altro cloud provider. Ogni regione AWS è composta da più zone di disponibilità (AZ), che sono partizioni di infrastruttura completamente isolate. Per isolare meglio i problemi e ottenere un’elevata disponibilità, i clienti possono partizionare le applicazioni tra più AZ nella stessa Region AWS. Per i clienti che eseguono carichi di lavoro in locale o in casi d’uso remoti o connessi in modo intermittente, offriamo servizi che forniscono funzionalità specifiche per i dati offline e l’elaborazione e lo storage remoti. Ci impegniamo a continuare a migliorare la nostra gamma di opzioni per la sovranità del dato e la resilienza, consentendo ai clienti di continuare ad operare anche in caso di interruzioni o disconnessioni.

Guadagnare fiducia attraverso trasparenza e garanzie

In AWS, guadagnare la fiducia dei clienti è alla base della nostra attività. Comprendiamo che proteggere i dati dei clienti è fondamentale per raggiungere questo obiettivo, e sappiamo che la fiducia si guadagna anche attraverso la trasparenza. Per questo siamo trasparenti su come i nostri servizi elaborano e spostano i dati. Continueremo ad opporci alle richieste relative ai dati dei clienti provenienti dalle forze dell’ordine e dalle agenzie governative. Forniamo linee guida, prove di conformità e impegni contrattuali in modo che i nostri clienti possano utilizzare i servizi AWS per soddisfare i requisiti normativi e di conformità. Ci impegniamo infine a continuare a fornire la trasparenza e la flessibilità aziendali necessarie a soddisfare l’evoluzione delle leggi sulla privacy e sulla sovranità del dato.

Gestire i cambiamenti come un team

Aiutare i clienti a proteggere i propri dati in un mondo caratterizzato da normative, tecnologie e rischi in evoluzione richiede un lavoro di squadra. Non ci aspetteremmo mai che i nostri clienti lo facessero da soli. I nostri partner di fiducia svolgono un ruolo di primo piano nel fornire soluzioni ai clienti. Ad esempio in Germania, T-Systems (parte di Deutsche Telekom) offre un servizio denominato Data Protection as a Managed Service on AWS. Questo fornisce indicazioni per garantire che i controlli di residenza dei dati siano configurati correttamente, offrendo servizi per la configurazione e la gestione delle chiavi di crittografia, oltre a competenze per aiutare i clienti a soddisfare i requisiti di sovranità digitale nel cloud AWS, per i quali stiamo collaborando con partner locali di cui i nostri clienti si fidano.

Ci impegniamo ad aiutare i nostri clienti a soddisfare i requisiti di sovranità digitale. Continueremo a innovare le funzionalità, i controlli e le garanzie di sovranità del dato all’interno del cloud AWS globale e a fornirli senza compromessi sfruttando tutta la potenza di AWS.


Japanese version

AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge(AWSのデジタル統制に関するお客様との約束): 妥協のない管理

AWS セールス、マーケティングおよびグローバルサービス担当シニアバイスプレジデント マット・ガーマン(Matt Garman)

クラウドの可能性を最大限に引き出すためには、お客様が自らデータを管理することが不可欠であると、私たちは常に考えてきました。アマゾン ウェブ サービス(以下、AWS) は、お客様がデータの保管場所の管理とデータの移動を統制できる唯一の大手クラウドプロバイダーであった当初から、お客様にこれらの統制を実施していただくことを最優先事項としていました。クラウドが主流になり、政府機関及び標準化団体がセキュリティ、データ保護、プライバシーに関する規制を策定し続ける中で、お客様による統制の重要性は過去 16 年間にわたって一貫して高まっています。

今日、デジタル資産を管理すること、つまりデジタル統制は、かつてないほど重要になっています。

私たちは、世界で最も高性能で、スケーラビリティと信頼性の高いクラウドを提供するために、イノベーションとサービスの拡大を実現してきました。その中でお客様が、どの地域でも継続して管理し、規制要件を満たせるようにすることを最優先してきました。この状況は、業界や国によって大きく異なります。ヨーロッパなど世界中の多くの地域で、デジタル統制に関する政策が急速に発展しています。お客様は非常に複雑な状況に直面しています。過去 18 か月間にわたり、私たちは、お客様から、AWSの全ての機能を使うか、またはイノベーション・変革・成長を妨げてでも機能が限定されたクラウドソリューションを使うかを選択しなければいけない、という懸念の声を多く聞いてきました。私たちは、お客様がこのような選択を迫られるべきではないと考えています。

本日、私たちは、「AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge(AWSのデジタル統制に関するお客様との約束)」を発表いたします。クラウドで利用できる最も高度な一連の統制管理と機能とを、すべての AWS のお客様に提供します。

AWS は既に、データの保存場所、アクセスできるユーザー、データの使用方法をお客様が管理できるようにする、さまざまなデータ保護機能、認定、契約上の責任を提供しています。私たちは、世界中のお客様が AWS クラウドの機能、パフォーマンス、イノベーション、スケールを犠牲にすることなく、デジタル統制の要件を満たすことができるよう、これらの機能を拡張することを約束いたします。同時に、お客様と規制当局双方の進化するニーズと要件を深く理解し、迅速な導入とイノベーションにより、デジタル統制のニーズと要件を満たすよう継続的に努力していきます。

企画・設計段階からの統制 (sovereign-by-design)

この約束を果たすための私たちのアプローチは、創業初日からそうであったように、AWS クラウドにおいて企画・設計段階からの統制を維持し続けることです。私たちのこれまでの取組の初期段階で、金融サービスやヘルスケアなどの業界のお客様 (世界で最もセキュリティとデータのプライバシーを重視する組織であるお客様) から、クラウドを使うために必要なデータ保護機能や管理について多くのご意見をいただきました。そして、私たちは AWS の暗号化とキー管理機能を開発し、コンプライアンス認定を取得して、お客様のニーズを満たすための契約を締結してきました。お客様の要件の進化に応じて、AWS クラウドも進化、拡張しています。最近の例としては、昨年末に AWS Control Tower (AWS 環境を管理するサービス) に追加したデータレジデンシーガードレールがあります。これにより、お客様のデータが保存および処理される物理的な場所をさらに詳細に管理できるようになりました。2022 年 2 月に、Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) のデータ保護行動規範に準拠した AWS のサービスを発表しました。これにより、お客様は独立した検証と、当社のサービスがEUの一般データ保護規則 (GDPR) に準拠して使用できるという追加の保証を得ることができます。これらの機能と保証は、すべての AWS のお客様にご利用いただけます。

私たちは、データ保管、きめ細かなアクセス制限、暗号化、耐障害性に関する機能の展開・拡大に引き続き投資することを約束します。

1. データの保管場所の管理

お客様は、AWS を使用して常にデータの保管場所を制御できます。例えば、現在ヨーロッパでは、8 つある既存のリージョンのいずれにもデータを保管できます。私たちは、お客様のデータを保護するために、さらに多くのサービスと機能を提供するよう努めています。さらに、よりきめ細かなデータの保管・管理と透明性を提供するため、既存の機能を拡張することにも取り組んでいます。また、ID や請求情報などの運用データのデータ保管・管理も拡大していきます。

2.検証可能なデータアクセスの管理

私たちは、お客様のデータへのアクセスを制限する、他に類を見ないイノベーションを設計し、実現してきました。AWS のコンピューティングサービスの基盤である AWS Nitro System は、専用のハードウェアとソフトウェアを使用して、Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) での処理中に外部アクセスからデータを保護します。Nitro は、物理的にも論理的にも強固なセキュリティ境界を設けることで、AWS の従業員を含め、誰も Amazon EC2 上のお客様のワークロードにアクセスできないように制限を行います。私たちは、お客様またはお客様が信頼しているパートナーからの要求がない限り、お客様のデータへのすべてのアクセスを制限できるよう、さらなるアクセス管理の構築に継続的に取り組んでいきます。

3.あらゆる場所ですべてを暗号化する機能

現在私たちは、転送中、保存中、メモリ内にあるかを問わず、データを暗号化する機能と管理をお客様に提供しています。すべての AWS のサービスは既に暗号化をサポートしており、そのほとんどのサービスでは、AWSからもアクセスできないお客様が管理するキーによる暗号化もサポートしています。私たちは、お客様が AWS クラウドの内部または外部で管理されている暗号化キーを使用して、あらゆる場所ですべてを暗号化できるように、統制と暗号化機能のさらなる管理に向けたイノベーションと投資を続けていきます。

4. クラウドの耐障害性

可用性と強靭性なくしてデジタル統制を実現することは不可能です。サプライチェーンの中断、ネットワークの中断、自然災害などの事象が発生した場合、ワークロードの管理と高可用性が重要になります。現在、AWS はどのクラウドプロバイダーよりも高いネットワーク可用性を実現しています。各 AWS リージョンは、完全に分離されたインフラストラクチャパーティションである複数のアベイラビリティーゾーン (AZ) で構成されています。生じうる事象をより適切に分離して高可用性を実現するために、お客様は同じ AWS リージョン内の複数の AZ にアプリケーションを分割できます。ワークロードをオンプレミスで実行しているお客様、または断続的な接続やリモートのユースケースには、オフラインデータおよびリモートコンピューティングとストレージに関する特定の機能を備えたサービスを提供しています。私たちは、中断や切断が発生してもお客様が業務を継続できるように、統制と回復力のある選択肢を継続的に拡大していきます。

透明性と保証による信頼の獲得

AWS では、お客様の信頼を得ることはビジネスの根幹です。そのためには、お客様のデータの保護が不可欠であると考えています。また、信頼を継続的に得るには、透明性が必要であることも理解しています。私たちは、当社のサービスによるデータの処理および転送方法に関して、透明性を確保しています。法執行機関や政府機関からのお客様のデータの要求に対しては、引き続き異議申し立てを行っていきます。お客様が AWS のサービスを利用してコンプライアンスや規制の要件を満たすことができるように、ガイダンス、コンプライアンスの証拠、契約責任を提供します。私たちは、進化するプライバシーおよび統制に関する法律に対応するために必要な透明性とビジネスの柔軟性を引き続き提供していきます。

チームとしての変化への対応

規制、テクノロジー、リスクが変化する世界において、お客様によるデータの保護を支援するためには、チームワークが必要です。私たちは、お客様だけで対応することを期待するようなことは決してありません。AWS の信頼できるパートナーが、お客様にソリューションを提供するうえで顕著な役割を果たします。例えば、ドイツでは、T-Systems (ドイツテレコムグループ) が AWS のマネージドサービスとしてデータ保護を提供しています。同社は、データ保護・管理が適切に設定されていることを確認するためのガイダンスを提供し、暗号化キーの設定と管理に関するサービスと専門知識を提供して、顧客が AWS クラウドでデジタル統制要件に対応できるよう支援しています。私たちは、デジタル統制要件への対応を支援するために、お客様が信頼するローカルパートナーとの連携を強化しています。

私たちは、お客様がデジタル統制要件を満たすことができるよう、支援を行うことを約束しています。私たちは引き続き、グローバルな AWS クラウドにおける統制機能、管理、保証を革新し、それらを AWS の全ての機能において妥協することなく提供していきます。


Korean version

AWS 디지털 주권 서약: 타협 없는 제어

작성자: Matt Garman, 아마존웹서비스(AWS) 마케팅 및 글로벌 서비스 담당 수석 부사장

아마존웹서비스(AWS)는 클라우드가 지닌 잠재력이 최대로 발휘되기 위해서는 고객이 반드시 자신의 데이터를 제어할 수 있어야 한다고 항상 믿어 왔습니다. AWS는 서비스 초창기부터 고객이 데이터의 위치와 이동을 제어할 수 있도록 허용하는 유일한 주요 클라우드 공급업체였고 지금까지도 고객에게 이러한 권리를 부여하는 것을 최우선 과제로 삼고 있습니다. 클라우드가 주류가 되고 정부 및 표준 제정 기관이 보안, 데이터 보호 및 개인정보보호 규정을 지속적으로 발전시키면서 지난 16년간 이러한 원칙의 중요성은 더욱 커졌습니다.

오늘날 디지털 자산 또는 디지털 주권 제어는 그 어느 때보다 중요합니다.

AWS는 세계에서 가장 우수하고 확장 가능하며 신뢰할 수 있는 클라우드를 제공하기 위한 혁신과 서비스 확대에 주력하면서, 고객이 사업을 운영하는 모든 곳에서 스스로 통제할 수 있을 뿐 아니라 규제 요구 사항을 충족할 수 있어야 한다는 점을 언제나 최우선 순위로 여겨왔습니다. AWS의 이러한 기업 철학은 개별 산업과 국가에 따라 상당히 다른 모습으로 표출됩니다. 유럽을 비롯해 전 세계 많은 지역에서 디지털 주권 정책이 빠르게 진화하고 있습니다. 고객은 엄청난 복잡성에 직면해 있으며, 지난 18개월 동안 많은 고객들은 AWS의 모든 기능을 갖춘 클라우드 서비스와 혁신, 변화, 성장을 저해할 수 있는 제한적 기능의 클라우드 솔루션 중 하나를 선택해야만 할 수도 있다는 우려가 있다고 말하였습니다. 하지만 AWS는 고객이 이러한 선택을 해서는 안 된다는 굳건한 믿음을 가지고 있습니다.

이것이 바로 오늘, 모든 AWS 고객에게 클라우드 기술에서 가장 발전된 형태의 디지털 주권 제어와 기능을 제공하겠다는 약속인, “AWS 디지털 주권 서약”을 소개하는 이유입니다.

AWS는 이미 고객이 데이터 위치, 데이터에 액세스가 가능한 인력 및 데이터 이용 방식을 제어할 수 있는 다양한 데이터 보호 기능, 인증 및 계약상 의무를 제공하고 있습니다. 또한 전 세계 고객이 AWS 클라우드의 기능, 성능, 혁신 및 규모에 영향을 주지 않으면서 디지털 주권 관련 요건을 충족할 수 있도록 기존 데이터 보호 정책을 지속적으로 확대할 것을 약속합니다. 동시에 고객과 규제 기관의 변화하는 요구와 규제 요건을 깊이 이해하고 이를 충족하기 위해 신속하게 적응하고 혁신을 이어나가고자 합니다.

디지털 주권 보호를 위한 원천 설계

이 약속을 이행하기 위한 우리의 접근 방식은 처음부터 그러했듯이 AWS 클라우드를 애초부터 디지털 주권을 강화하는 방식으로 설계하는 것입니다. AWS는 사업 초기부터 금융 서비스 및 의료 업계와 같이 세계 최고 수준의 보안 및 데이터 정보 보호를 요구하는 조직의 고객으로부터 클라우드를 사용하는 데 필요한 데이터 보호 기능 및 제어에 관한 많은 의견을 수렴했습니다. AWS는 고객의 요구 사항을 충족하기 위하여 암호화 및 핵심적 관리 기능을 개발하고, 규정 준수 인증을 획득했으며, 계약상 의무를 제공하였습니다. 고객의 요구 사항이 변화함에 따라 AWS 클라우드도 진화하고 확장해 왔습니다. 최근의 몇 가지 예를 들면, 작년 말 AWS Control Tower(AWS 환경 관리 서비스)에 추가한 데이터 레지던시 가드레일이 있습니다. 이는 고객 데이터가 저장되고 처리되는 물리적 위치에 대한 제어 권한을 고객에게 훨씬 더 많이 부여하는 것을 목표로 합니다. 2022년 2월에는 유럽 클라우드 인프라 서비스(CISPE) 데이터 보호 행동 강령을 준수하는 AWS 서비스를 발표한 바 있습니다. 이것은 유럽연합의 개인정보보호규정(GDPR)에 따라 서비스를 사용할 수 있다는 독립적인 검증과 추가적 보증을 고객에게 제공하는 것입니다. 이러한 기능과 보증은 AWS의 모든 고객에게 적용됩니다.

AWS는 데이터 레지던시, 세분화된 액세스 제한, 암호화 및 복원력 기능의 증대를 위한 야심 찬 로드맵에 다음과 같이 계속 투자할 것을 약속합니다.

1. 데이터 위치에 대한 제어

고객은 항상 AWS를 통해 데이터 위치를 제어해 왔습니다. 예를 들어 현재 유럽에서는 고객이 기존 8개 리전 중 원하는 위치에 데이터를 배치할 수 있습니다. AWS는 고객의 데이터를 보호하기 위한 더 많은 서비스와 기능을 제공할 것을 약속합니다. 또한, 기존 기능을 확장하여 더욱 세분화된 데이터 레지던시 제어 및 투명성을 제공할 것을 약속합니다. 뿐만 아니라, ID 및 결제 정보와 같은 운영 데이터에 대한 데이터 레지던시 제어를 확대할 예정입니다.

2. 데이터 액세스에 대한 검증 가능한 제어

AWS는 고객 데이터에 대한 액세스를 제한하는 최초의 혁신적 설계를 제공했습니다. AWS 컴퓨팅 서비스의 기반인 AWS Nitro System은 특수 하드웨어 및 소프트웨어를 사용하여 EC2에서 처리하는 동안 외부 액세스로부터 데이터를 보호합니다. 강력한 물리적 보안 및 논리적 보안의 경계를 제공하는 Nitro는 AWS의 모든 사용자를 포함하여 누구도 EC2의 고객 워크로드에 액세스할 수 없도록 설계되었습니다. AWS는 고객 또는 고객이 신뢰하는 파트너의 요청이 있는 경우를 제외하고, 고객 데이터에 대한 모든 액세스를 제한하는 추가 액세스 제한을 계속 구축할 것을 약속합니다.

3. 모든 것을 어디서나 암호화하는 능력

현재 AWS는 전송 중인 데이터, 저장된 데이터 또는 메모리에 있는 데이터를 암호화할 수 있는 기능과 제어권을 고객에게 제공합니다. 모든 AWS 서비스는 이미 암호화를 지원하고 있으며, 대부분 AWS에서 액세스할 수 없는 고객 관리형 키를 사용한 암호화도 지원합니다. 또한 고객이 AWS 클라우드 내부 또는 외부에서 관리되는 암호화 키로 어디서든 어떤 것이든 것을 암호화할 수 있도록 디지털 주권 및 암호화 기능에 대한 추가 제어를 지속적으로 혁신하고 투자할 것을 약속합니다.

4. 클라우드의 복원력

복원력과 생존성 없이는 디지털 주권을 달성할 수 없습니다. 공급망 장애, 네트워크 중단 및 자연 재해와 같은 이벤트가 발생할 경우 워크로드 제어 및 고가용성은 매우 중요합니다. 현재 AWS는 모든 클라우드 공급업체 중 가장 높은 네트워크 가용성을 제공합니다. 각 AWS 리전은 완전히 격리된 인프라 파티션인 여러 가용 영역(AZ)으로 구성됩니다. 문제를 보다 효과적으로 격리하고 고가용성을 달성하기 위해 고객은 동일한 AWS 리전의 여러 AZ로 애플리케이션을 분할할 수 있습니다. 온프레미스 또는 간헐적으로 연결되거나 원격 사용 사례에서 워크로드를 실행하는 고객을 위해 오프라인 데이터와 원격 컴퓨팅 및 스토리지에 대한 특정 기능을 지원하는 서비스를 제공합니다. AWS는 고객이 중단되거나 연결이 끊기는 상황에도 운영을 지속할 수 있도록 자주적이고 탄력적인 옵션의 범위를 지속적으로 강화할 것을 약속합니다.

투명성과 보장을 통한 신뢰 확보

고객의 신뢰를 얻는 것이 AWS 비즈니스의 토대입니다. 이를 위해서는 고객 데이터를 보호하는 것이 핵심이라는 점을 잘 알고 있습니다. 투명성을 통해 계속 신뢰를 쌓아야 한다는 점 또한 잘 알고 있습니다. AWS는 서비스가 데이터를 처리하고 전송하는 방식을 투명하게 공개합니다. 법 집행 기관 및 정부 기관의 고객 데이터 제공 요청에 대하여 계속해서 이의를 제기할 것입니다. AWS는 고객이 AWS 서비스를 사용하여 규정 준수 및 규제 요건을 충족할 수 있도록 지침, 규정 준수 증거 및 계약상의 의무 이행을 제공합니다. AWS는 진화하는 개인 정보 보호 및 각 지역의 디지털 주권 규정을 준수하는 데 필요한 투명성과 비즈니스 유연성을 계속 제공할 것을 약속합니다.

팀 차원의 변화 모색

변화하는 규정, 기술 및 위험이 있는 환경에서 고객이 데이터를 보호할 수 있도록 하려면 팀워크가 필요합니다. 고객 혼자서는 절대 할 수 없는 일입니다. 신뢰할 수 있는 AWS의 파트너는 고객이 문제를 해결하는데 중요한 역할을 합니다. 예를 들어, 독일에서는 T-Systems(Deutsche Telekom의 일부)를 통해 AWS의 관리형 서비스로서의 데이터 보호를 제공합니다. 데이터 레지던시 제어가 올바르게 구성되도록 하기 위한 지침을 제공하고, 암호화 키의 구성 및 관리를 위한 서비스를 통해 고객이 AWS 클라우드에서 디지털 주권 요구 사항을 해결하는 데 도움이 되는 전문 지식을 제공합니다. AWS는 고객이 디지털 주권 요구 사항을 해결하는 데 도움이 될 수 있도록 신뢰할 수 있는 현지 파트너와 협력하고 있습니다.

AWS는 고객이 디지털 주권 요구 사항을 충족할 수 있도록 최선의 지원을 다하고있습니다. AWS는 글로벌 AWS 클라우드 내에서 주권 기능, 제어 및 보안을 지속적으로 혁신하고, AWS의 모든 기능에 대한 어떠한 타협 없이 이를 제공할 것입니다.

Matt Garman

Matt Garman

Matt is currently the Senior Vice President of AWS Sales, Marketing and Global Services at AWS, and also sits on Amazon’s executive leadership S-Team. Matt joined Amazon in 2006, and has held several leadership positions in AWS over that time. Matt previously served as Vice President of the Amazon EC2 and Compute Services businesses for AWS for over 10 years. Matt was responsible for P&L, product management, and engineering and operations for all compute and storage services in AWS. He started at Amazon when AWS first launched in 2006 and served as one of the first product managers, helping to launch the initial set of AWS services. Prior to Amazon, he spent time in product management roles at early stage Internet startups. Matt earned a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Use AWS Nitro Enclaves to perform computation of multiple sensitive datasets

Post Syndicated from Sheila Busser original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/leveraging-aws-nitro-enclaves-to-perform-computation-of-multiple-sensitive-datasets/

This blog post is written by, Jeff Wisman, Principal Solutions Architect and Andrew Lee, Solutions Architect.

Introduction

Many organizations have sensitive datasets that they do not want to share with others because of stringent security and compliance requirements. However, they would still like to use each other’s data to perform processing and aggregation. For example, B2B (business to business) companies often want to augment their customer information dataset with additional demographic or psychographic signals. This enrichment of data is often done by one party sending customer information to be matched against another party’s data universe. Naturally, privacy and the revealing of business-critical customer information to an external entity is a major concern here. In this blog, we present a solution where multiple parties can choose to give an isolated compute environment access to their encrypted data to be decrypted and processed in a secure way using AWS Nitro Enclaves.

Designing and building your own secure private computing solution can be challenging, with few out-of-the-box solutions. Our sample application uses Nitro Enclaves, which support the creation of an isolated execution environment called an enclave and a cryptographic attestation process for generating and validating the enclave’s identity. The attestation process makes it possible to ensure only authorized code is running, as well as integration with the AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), so that only enclaves that you choose can access sensitive data. Nitro Enlaves enables customers to focus more on their application instead of worrying about integration with external services. While many enterprise use cases involve complex datasets, we’ll use a hypothetical scenario to learn the fundamentals of how this works. The example proof of concept (POC) application will be centered around a third-party bidding service for real estate transactions. Buyers will submit encrypted bids to the application. Once all the bids have been entered, the application will decrypt the bids, determine the highest bidder, and return a result without disclosing the actual bid amounts to any party.

How it works

The POC will be deployed across three AWS accounts, one each for buyer-1, buyer-2, and the bidding service. The bidding service will be run in an enclave on the bidding service’s account.

  1. The bidding service will generate a set of measurements called platform configuration registers (PCRs) from the application code that uses the attestation process. PCRs are cryptographic measurements that are unique to an enclave. An attestation document can be used to verify the identity of the enclave and establish trust.
  2. The buyers will each generate their own AWS KMS key and use AWS KMS to authorize cryptographic requests from the bidding service enclave based on PCR values in the attestation document.
  3. The buyers will place their bids into a file, encrypt the file using AWS KMS, and store them in their own Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
  4. The bidding service will run the application, which will retrieve the encrypted bids from each buyer’s S3 bucket, decrypt the bids, calculate the highest bidder, and store the result in an S3 bucket.

Overall workflow of POC

Implementation

Let’s take a deeper dive into the steps involved in implementing this POC. To deploy the POC to your environment, follow the instructions in the AWS Nitro Enclaves Bidding Service GitHub project.

Enclave image generation

The first step is for the bidding service to launch the parent instance that will host the enclave. Refer to Launch the parent instance for more information about this process. The two real estate buyers, which we will call buyer-1 and buyer-2, will need to review the application code of the enclave application and agree that their data will not be exposed outside the enclave. Once they agree on the code, the bidding service generates the enclave image and a set of measurements as part of the attestation process. The buyers should also perform this process to ensure that the enclave image was generated and its measurements are from the agreed-upon application code. During the generation process, a unique set of measurements is taken of the application, which will make up its identity. When the enclave makes a request to decrypt data with AWS KMS, those measurements will be included in an attestation document to prove the enclave’s identity. Access policies in AWS KMS can then grant access to that identity. An example of a set of measurements is shown here:

Enclave Image successfully created.
{ "Measurements": { "HashAlgorithm": "Sha384 { ... }",
"PCR0":"287b24930a9f0fe14b01a71ecdc00d8be8fad90f9834d547158854b8279c74095c43f8d7f047714e98deb7903f20e3dd",
"PCR1":"aca6e62ffbf5f7deccac452d7f8cee1b94048faf62afc16c8ab68c9fed8c38010c73a669f9a36e596032f0b973d21895",
"PCR2":"0315f483ae1220b5e023d8c80ff1e135edcca277e70860c31f3003b36e3b2aaec5d043c9ce3a679e3bbd5b3b93b61d6f"
} }

Preparing encrypted data

Each buyer will create an AWS KMS key and use that key to encrypt their bids. The encrypted bids will be stored in their respective S3 buckets. Because AWS KMS integrates with Nitro Enclaves to provide built-in attestation support, each buyer can add the PCR values generated earlier as a condition to their respective AWS KMS key policies. This will ensure that only the enclave application code agreed upon by both buyers will have access to utilize the keys for decryption. The following is an example of a KMS key policy with PCR values as a condition:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Id": "key-default-1",
  "Statement": [{
    "Sid": "Enable decrypt from enclave",
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Principal": < PARENT INSTANCE ROLE ARN > ,
    "Action": "kms:Decrypt",
    "Resource": "",
    "Condition": {
      "StringEqualsIgnoreCase": {
        "kms:RecipientAttestation:ImageSha384": "<PCR0 VALUE FROM BUILDING ENCLAVE IMAGE>",
        "kms:RecipientAttestation:PCR1":"<PCR1 VALUE FROM BUILDING ENCLAVE IMAGE>",
        "kms:RecipientAttestation:PCR2":"<PCR2 VALUE FROM BUILDING ENCLAVE IMAGE>"
      }
    }
  }]
}

The previous example only shows a key policy that uses PCR0, PCR1, and PCR2. You can further scope down the permissions by adding additional PCR values, for instance, role, parent instance ID, and a signing certificate for the enclave image. Refer to the AWS Nitro Enclaves User Guide for more details about PCR values.

Running the POC

The bidding service will run the enclave image generated earlier on the parent instance. The application runs as two parts, one part on the parent instance and another in the enclave. Communication between the parent and the enclave is done through a vsock connection. An AWS KMS proxy is also used on the parent to allow communication between the enclave and AWS KMS for decrypting data. The parent application will retrieve the encrypted bids from each buyer’s S3 bucket and send them to the enclave. The enclave will decrypt the data using both buyers’ AWS KMS keys and present attestation documents signed by the Nitro Hypervisor. AWS KMS will validate that the PCR values in the attestation documents match the key policy before performing the decryption. The decryption event will be logged in AWS CloudTrail for auditing purposes. Once the encrypted bids are decrypted, the values are compared, and the winning buyer is recorded in the result. The unencrypted result is then returned to the parent and written to an S3 bucket in the bidding service’s account. A diagram of this process is shown in Figure 2.

Cleanup

Be sure you delete all the resources that were created when following the included Github project:

  • Bidding service EC2 instance EC2 instance IAM role and policy
  • AWS KMS Customer managed keys
  • S3 Buckets for storing encrypted files

Conclusion

In this blog post, we introduced a sample POC utilizing Nitro Enclaves to allow a bidding service to process two parties’ encrypted data without revealing their data to any party. We did this by ensuring access to sensitive data is only allowed from an application running within an enclave. With the straightforward integration of AWS KMS and the attestation process, customers can quickly develop applications on Nitro Enclaves that can enable computing on encrypted datasets from multiple accounts. For more information on AWS Nitro Enclaves, see the official product documentation or the introductory videos on YouTube.

Deep dive into NitroTPM and UEFI Secure Boot support in Amazon EC2

Post Syndicated from Neelay Thaker original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/deep-dive-into-nitrotpm-and-uefi-secure-boot-support-in-amazon-ec2/

Contributed by Samartha Chandrashekar, Principal Product Manager Amazon EC2

At re:Invent 2021, we announced NitroTPM, a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot support in Amazon EC2. In this blog post, we’ll share additional details on how these capabilities can help further raise the security bar of EC2 deployments.

A TPM is a security device to gather and attest system state, store and generate cryptographic data, and prove platform identity. Although TPMs are traditionally discrete chips or firmware modules, their adaptation on AWS as NitroTPM preserves their security properties without affecting the agility and scalability of EC2. NitroTPM makes it possible to use TPM-dependent applications and Operating System (OS) capabilities in EC2 instances. It conforms to the TPM 2.0 specification, which makes it easy to migrate existing on-premises workloads that use TPM functionalities to EC2.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot is a feature of UEFI that builds on EC2’s long-standing secure boot process and provides additional defense-in-depth that helps you secure software from threats that persist across reboots. It ensures that EC2 instances run authentic software by verifying the digital signature of all boot components, and halts the boot process if signature verification fails. When used with UEFI Secure Boot, NitroTPM can verify the integrity of software that boots and runs in the EC2 instance. It can measure instance properties and components as evidence that unaltered software in the correct order was used during boot. Features such as “Measured Boot” in Windows, Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) and dm-verity in popular Linux distributions can use NitroTPM to further secure OS launches from malware with administrative that attempt to persist across reboots.

NitroTPM derives its root-of-trust from the Nitro Security Chip and performs the same functions as a physical/discrete TPM. Similar to discrete TPMs, an immutable private and public Endorsement Key (EK) is set up inside the NitroTPM by AWS during instance creation. NitroTPM can serve as a “root-of-trust” to verify the provenance of software in the instance (e.g., NitroTPM’s EKCert as the basis for SSL certificates). Sensitive information protected by NitroTPM is made available only if the OS has booted correctly (i.e., boot measurements match expected values). If the system is tampered, keys are not released since the TPM state is different, thereby ensuring protection from malware attempting to hijack the boot process. NitroTPM can protect volume encryption keys used by full-disk encryption utilities (such as dm-crypt and BitLocker) or private keys for certificates.

NitroTPM can be used for attestation, a process to demonstrate that an EC2 instance meets pre-defined criteria, thereby allowing you to gain confidence in its integrity. It can be used to authenticate an instance requesting access to a resource (such as a service or a database) to be contingent on its health state (e.g., patching level, presence of mandated agents, etc.). For example, a private key can be “sealed” to a list of measurements of specific programs allowed to “unseal”. This makes it suited for use cases such as digital rights management to gate LDAP login, and database access on attestation. Access to AWS Key Management Service (KMS) keys to encrypt/decrypt data accessed by the instance can be made to require affirmative attestation of instance health. Anti-malware software (e.g., Windows Defender) can initiate remediation actions if attestation fails.

NitroTPM uses Platform Configuration Registers (PCR) to store system measurements. These do not change until the next boot of the instance. PCR measurements are computed during the boot process before malware can modify system state or tamper with the measuring process. These values are compared with pre-calculated known-good values, and secrets protected by NitroTPM are released only if the sequences match. PCRs are recalculated after each reboot, which ensures protection against malware aiming to hijack the boot process or persist across reboots. For example, if malware overwrites part of the kernel, measurements change, and disk decryption keys sealed to NitroTPM are not unsealed. Trust decisions can also be made based on additional criteria such as boot integrity, patching level, etc.

The workflow below shows how UEFI Secure Boot and NitroTPM work to ensure system integrity during OS startup.

workflow

To get started, you’ll need to register an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of an Operating System that supports TPM 2.0 and UEFI Secure Boot using the register-image primitive via the CLI, API, or console. Alternatively, you can use pre-configured AMIs from AWS for both Windows and Linux to launch EC2 instances with TPM and Secure Boot. The screenshot below shows a Windows Server 2019 instance on EC2 launched with NitroTPM using its inbox TPM 2.0 drivers to recognize a TPM device.

NitroTPM and UEFI Secure Boot enables you to further raise the bar in running their workloads in a secure and trustworthy manner. We’re excited for you to try out NitroTPM when it becomes publicly available in 2022. Contact [email protected] for additional information.

Confidential computing: an AWS perspective

Post Syndicated from David Brown original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/confidential-computing-an-aws-perspective/

Customers around the globe—from governments and highly regulated industries to small businesses and start-ups—trust Amazon Web Services (AWS) with their most sensitive data and applications. At AWS, keeping our customers’ workloads secure and confidential, while helping them meet their privacy and data sovereignty requirements, is our highest priority. Our investments in security technologies and rigorous operational practices meet and exceed even our most demanding customers’ confidential computing and data privacy standards. Over the years, we’ve made many long-term investments in purpose-built technologies and systems to keep raising the bar of security and confidentiality for our customers.

In the past year, there has been an increasing interest in the phrase confidential computing in the industry and in our customer conversations. We’ve observed that this phrase is being applied to various technologies that solve very different problems, leading to confusion about what it actually means. With the mission of innovating on behalf of our customers, we want to offer you our perspective on confidential computing.

At AWS, we define confidential computing as the use of specialized hardware and associated firmware to protect customer code and data during processing from outside access. Confidential computing has two distinct security and privacy dimensions. The most important dimension—the one we hear most often from customers as their key concern—is the protection of customer code and data from the operator of the underlying cloud infrastructure. The second dimension is the ability for customers to divide their own workloads into more-trusted and less-trusted components, or to design a system that allows parties that do not, or cannot, fully trust one another to build systems that work in close cooperation while maintaining confidentiality of each party’s code and data.

In this post, I explain how the AWS Nitro System intrinsically meets the requirements of the first dimension by providing those protections to customers who use Nitro-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, without requiring any code or workload changes from the customer side. I also explain how AWS Nitro Enclaves provides a way for customers to use familiar toolsets and programming models to meet the requirements of the second dimension. Before we get to the details, let’s take a closer look at the Nitro System.

What is the Nitro System?

The Nitro System, the underlying platform for all modern Amazon EC2 instances, is a great example of how we have invented and innovated on behalf of our customers to provide additional confidentiality and privacy for their applications. For ten years, we have been reinventing the EC2 virtualization stack by moving more and more virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and firmware, and the Nitro System is a result of this continuous and sustained innovation. The Nitro System is comprised of three main parts: the Nitro Cards, the Nitro Security Chip, and the Nitro Hypervisor. The Nitro Cards are dedicated hardware components with compute capabilities that perform I/O functions, such as the Nitro Card for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), the Nitro Card for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), and the Nitro Card for Amazon EC2 instance storage.

Nitro Cards—which are designed, built, and tested by Annapurna Labs, our in-house silicon development subsidiary—enable us to move key virtualization functionality off the EC2 servers—the underlying host infrastructure—that’s running EC2 instances. We engineered the Nitro System with a hardware-based root of trust using the Nitro Security Chip, allowing us to cryptographically measure and validate the system. This provides a significantly higher level of trust than can be achieved with traditional hardware or virtualization systems. The Nitro Hypervisor is a lightweight hypervisor that manages memory and CPU allocation, and delivers performances that is indistinguishable from bare metal (we recently compared it against our bare metal instances in the Bare metal performance with the AWS Nitro System post).

The Nitro approach to confidential computing

There are three main types of protection provided by the Nitro System. The first two protections underpin the key dimension of confidential computing—customer protection from the cloud operator and from cloud system software—and the third reinforces the second dimension—division of customer workloads into more-trusted and less-trusted elements.

  1. Protection from cloud operators: At AWS, we design our systems to ensure workload confidentiality between customers, and also between customers and AWS. We’ve designed the Nitro System to have no operator access. With the Nitro System, there’s no mechanism for any system or person to log in to EC2 servers (the underlying host infrastructure), read the memory of EC2 instances, or access any data stored on instance storage and encrypted EBS volumes. If any AWS operator, including those with the highest privileges, needs to do maintenance work on the EC2 server, they can do so only by using a strictly limited set of authenticated, authorized, and audited administrative APIs. None of these APIs have the ability to access customer data on the EC2 server. Because these technological restrictions are built into the Nitro System itself, no AWS operator can bypass these controls and protections. For additional defense-in-depth against physical attacks at the memory interface level, we offer memory encryption on various EC2 instances. Today, memory encryption is enabled by default on all Graviton2-based instances (T4g, M6g, C6g, C6gn, R6g, X2g), and Intel-based M6i instances, which have Total Memory Encryption (TME). Upcoming EC2 platforms based on the AMD Milan processor will feature Secure Memory Encryption (SME).
  2. Protection from AWS system software: The unique design of the Nitro System utilizes low-level, hardware-based memory isolation to eliminate direct access to customer memory, as well as to eliminate the need for a hypervisor on bare metal instances.

    • For virtualized EC2 instances (as shown in Figure 1), the Nitro Hypervisor coordinates with the underlying hardware-virtualization systems to create virtual machines that are isolated from each other as well as from the hypervisor itself. Network, storage, GPU, and accelerator access use SR-IOV, a technology that allows instances to interact directly with hardware devices using a pass-through connection securely created by the hypervisor. Other EC2 features such as instance snapshots and hibernation are all facilitated by dedicated agents that employ end-to-end memory encryption that is inaccessible to AWS operators.

      Figure 1: Virtualized EC2 instances

      Figure 1: Virtualized EC2 instances

    • For bare metal EC2 instances (as shown in Figure 2), there’s no hypervisor running on the EC2 server, and customers get dedicated and exclusive access to all of the underlying main system board. Bare metal instances are designed for customers who want access to the physical resources for applications that take advantage of low-level hardware features—such as performance counters and Intel® VT—that aren’t always available or fully supported in virtualized environments, and also for applications intended to run directly on the hardware or licensed and supported for use in non-virtualized environments. Bare metal instances feature the same storage, networking, and other EC2 capabilities as virtualized instances because the Nitro System implements all of the system functions normally provided by the virtualization layer in an isolated and independent manner using dedicated hardware and purpose-built system firmware. We used the very same technology to create Amazon EC2 Mac instances. Because the Nitro System operates over an independent bus, we can attach Nitro cards directly to Apple’s Mac mini hardware without any other physical modifications.

      Figure 2: Bare metal EC2 instance

      Figure 2: Bare metal EC2 instance

  3. Protection of sensitive computing and data elements from customers’ own operators and software: Nitro Enclaves provides the second dimension of confidential computing. Nitro Enclaves is a hardened and highly-isolated compute environment that’s launched from, and attached to, a customer’s EC2 instance. By default, there’s no ability for any user (even a root or admin user) or software running on the customer’s EC2 instance to have interactive access to the enclave. Nitro Enclaves has cryptographic attestation capabilities that allow customers to verify that all of the software deployed to their enclave has been validated and hasn’t been tampered with. A Nitro enclave has the same level of protection from the cloud operator as a normal Nitro-based EC2 instance, but adds the capability for customers to divide their own systems into components with different levels of trust. A Nitro enclave provides a means of protecting particularly sensitive elements of customer code and data not just from AWS operators but also from the customer’s own operators and other software.As the main goal of Nitro Enclaves is to protect against the customers’ own users and software on their EC2 instances, a Nitro enclave considers the EC2 instance to reside outside of its trust boundary. Therefore, a Nitro enclave shares no memory or CPU cores with the customer instance. To significantly reduce the attack surface area, a Nitro enclave also has no IP networking and offers no persistent storage. We designed Nitro Enclaves to be a platform that is highly accessible to all developers without the need to have advanced cryptography knowledge or CPU micro-architectural expertise, so that these developers can quickly and easily build applications to process sensitive data. At the same time, we focused on creating a familiar developer experience so that developing the trusted code that runs in a Nitro enclave is as easy as writing code for any Linux environment.

Summary

To summarize, the Nitro System’s unique approach to virtualization and isolation enables our customers to secure and isolate sensitive data processing from AWS operators and software at all times. It provides the most important dimension of confidential computing as an intrinsic, on-by-default, set of protections from the system software and cloud operators, and optionally via Nitro Enclaves even from customers’ own software and operators.

What’s next?

As mentioned earlier, the Nitro System represents our almost decade-long commitment to raising the bar for security and confidentiality for compute workloads in the cloud. It has allowed us to do more for our customers than is possible with off-the-shelf technology and hardware. But we’re not stopping here, and will continue to add more confidential computing capabilities in the coming months.

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Author

David Brown

David is the Vice President of Amazon EC2, a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. He joined AWS in 2007, as a software developer based in Cape Town, working on the early development of Amazon EC2. Over the last 12 years, he has had several roles within Amazon EC2, working on shaping the service into what it is today. Prior to joining Amazon, David worked as a software developer within a financial industry startup.