If it’s your first time purchasing and setting up InsightVM – or if you are a seasoned veteran – I highly recommend a ‘less is more’ strategy with site design. After many thousands of health checks performed by security consultants for InsightVM customers, the biggest challenge most consultants agree on is site designs with too many sites not healthy. When you have too many sites, it also means you have too many scan schedules, which are the most complex elementsof a deployment. Simplifying your site structure and scan schedules will allow you to better optimize your scan templates, leading to faster scanning and fewer potential issues from overlapping scans.
Weekly scanning cadence is the best practice.
The main goal is to use sites to bring data into the database as efficiently as possible and not to use sites to organize assets (data). For data organization, you will want to exclusively use Dynamic Asset Groups (DAGs) or Query Builder, then use these DAGs as your organized scope point for all reporting and remediation projects. Using Dynamic Asset Groups for all data organization will reduce the need for sites and their respective scan schedules, making for a much smoother, automatable, maintenance-free site experience.
For example, if you have a group of locations accessible by the same scan engine:
Site A, managed by the Desktop team using IP scope 10.10.16.0/20
Site B, managed by the Server team using 10.25.10/23
Site C, managed by the Linux team using 10.40.20.0/22
Instead of creating three separate sites for each location, which would require three separate schedule points, it would be better to put all three ranges in a single site (as long as they are using the same scan engine and same scan template), then create three Dynamic Asset Groups based on IP Address: ‘is in the range of’ filtering. This way, we can still use the DAGs to scope the reports and a single combined site with a single scan schedule. Example DAG:
Another reason why this is important is that over the last 10 years, scanning has become extremely fast and is way more efficient when it comes to bulk scanning. For example, 10 years ago, InsightVM (or Nexpose at the time) could only scan 10 assets at the same time using a 16GB Linux scan engine, whereas today, with the same scan engine, InsightVM can scan 400 assets at the same time. Nmap has also significantly increased in speed; it used to take a week to scan a class A network range, but now it should take less than a day, if not half a day. More information about scan template tuning can be found on this Scan template tuning blog.
Depending on your deployment size, it is okay to have more than one site per scan engine; the above is a guideline – not a policy – for a much easier-to-maintain experience. Just keep these recommendations in mind when creating your sites. Also, keep in mind that you’ll eventually want to get into Policy scanning. For that, you’ll need to account for at least 10 more policy-based sites, unless you use agent-based policy scanning. Keeping your site design simple will allow for adding these additional sites in the future without really feeling like it’s adding to the complexity. Check out my Policy Scanning blog for more insight into Policy scanning techniques:
Next, let’s quickly walk through a site and its components. The first tab is the ‘Info and Security’ tab. It contains the site name, description, importance, tagging options, organization options, and access options. Most companies only set a name on this page. I generally don’t recommend using tags with sites and only tagging DAGs. The ‘importance’ option is essentially obsolete, and the organization and access are optional. The only requirement in this section is the site Name.
The Assets tab is next, where you can add your site scope and exclusions. Assets can be added using IP address ranges, CIDR (slash notation), or hostname. If you have a large CSV of assets, you can copy them all and paste them in, and the tool should account for them. You can also use DAGs to scope and exclude assets. There are many fun strategies for scoping sites via DAGs, such as running a discovery scan against your IP ranges, populating the DAGs with the results, and vulnerability scanning those specific assets.
The last part of the assets tab is the connection option, where you can add dynamic scope elements to convert the site into a dynamic site. You can find additional information regarding dynamic site scoping here.
The authentication tab should only validate that you have the correct shared credentials for the site scope. You should always use shared credentials over credentials created within the site.
For the scan template section, I recommend using either the ‘full audit without web spider,’ discovery scan, or a custom-built scan template using recommendations from the scan template blog mentioned above.
In the scan engine tab, select the scan engine or pool you plan to use. Do not use the local scan engine if you’re scanning more than 1500 assets across all sites.
Mostly, I don’t use or recommend using site alerts. If you set up alerts based on vulnerability results, you could end up spamming your email. Two primary use cases for alerts are alerting based on the scan status of ‘failed’ or ‘paused’ or if you want additional alerting when scanning public-facing assets. You can read this blog for additional information on configuring public-facing scanning.
Next, we have schedules. For the most part, schedules are pretty easy to figure out; just note the “frequency” is context-sensitive based on what you choose for a start date. Also, note that sub-scheduling can be used to hide complexity within the schedule. I do not recommend using this option; if you do, only use it sparingly. This setting can add additional complexity, potentially causing problems for other system users if they’re not aware it is configured. You can also set a scan duration, which is a nice feature if you end up with too many sites. It lets you control how long the scan runs before pausing or stopping. If your site design is simple enough, for example, seven total sites for seven days of the week, one site can be scheduled for each day, and there would be no need for a scan duration to be set. Just let the scan run as long as it needs.
Site-level blackouts can also be used, although they’re rarely configured. 10 years ago, it was a great feature if you could only scan in a small window each day, and you wanted to continue scanning the next day in that same scan window. However, scanning is so fast these days that it is almost never used anymore.
Lastly, a weekly scanning cadence is a recommended best practice. Daily scanning is unnecessary and creates a ton of excess data – filling your hard drive – and monthly scanning is too far between scans, leading to reduced network visibility. Weekly scanning also allows you to set a smaller asset data retention interval of 30 days, or 4 times your scan cycle, before deleting assets with ‘last scan dates’ older than 30 days. Data retention can be set up in the Maintenance section of the Administration page, which you can read about here.
I am a big advocate of the phrase ‘Complexity is the enemy of security’; complexity is the biggest thing I recommend avoiding with your site design. Whether scanning a thousand assets or a hundred thousand, keep your sites set as close as possible to a 1:1 with your scan engines. Try to keep sites for data collection, not data organization. If you can use DAGs for your data organization, they can be easily used in the query builder, where they can be leveraged to scope dashboards and even projects. Here is a link with more information reporting workflows.
In the end, creating Sites can be easier than creating DAGs. If, however, you put in the extra effort upfront to create DAGs for all of your data organization and keep Sites simple, it will pay off big time. You’ll experience fewer schedules, less maintenance, and hopefully a reduction of that overwhelming feeling seen with so many customers when they have more than 100 sites in their InsightVM deployment.
Today, we’re announcing a new capability for Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) message data protection. In this post, we show you how you can use this new capability to create custom data identifiers to detect and protect domain-specific sensitive data, such as your company’s employee IDs. Previously, you could only use managed data identifiers to detect and protect common sensitive data, such as names, addresses, and credit card numbers.
Overview
Amazon SNS is a serverless messaging service that provides topics for push-based, many-to-many messaging for decoupling distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven serverless applications. As applications become more complex, it can become challenging for topic owners to manage the data flowing through their topics. These applications might inadvertently start sending sensitive data to topics, increasing regulatory risk. To mitigate the risk, you can use message data protection to protect sensitive application data using built-in, no-code, scalable capabilities.
To discover and protect data flowing through SNS topics with message data protection, you can associate data protection policies to your topics. Within these policies, you can write statements that define which types of sensitive data you want to discover and protect. Within each policy statement, you can then define whether you want to act on data flowing inbound to an SNS topic or outbound to an SNS subscription, the AWS accounts or specific AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) principals the statement applies to, and the actions you want to take on the sensitive data found.
Now, message data protection provides three actions to help you protect your data. First, the audit operation reports on the amount of sensitive data found. Second, the deny operation helps prevent the publishing or delivery of payloads that contain sensitive data. Third, the de-identify operation can mask or redact the sensitive data detected. These no-code operations can help you adhere to a variety of compliance regulations, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
This message data protection feature coexists with the message data encryption feature in SNS, both contributing to an enhanced security posture of your messaging workloads.
Managed and custom data identifiers
After you add a data protection policy to your SNS topic, message data protection uses pattern matching and machine learning models to scan your messages for sensitive data, then enforces the data protection policy in real time. The types of sensitive data are referred to as data identifiers. These data identifiers can be either managed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) or custom to your domain.
Custom data identifiers (CDI), on the other hand, enable you to define custom regular expressions in the data protection policy itself, then refer to them from policy statements. Using custom data identifiers, you can scan for business-specific sensitive data, which managed data identifiers can’t. For example, you can use a custom data identifier to look for company-specific employee IDs in SNS message payloads. Internally, SNS has guardrails to make sure custom data identifiers are safe and that they add only low single-digit millisecond latency to message processing.
In a data protection policy statement, you refer to a custom data identifier using only the name that you have given it, as follows:
Note that custom data identifiers can be used in conjunction with managed data identifiers, as part of the same data protection policy statement. In the preceding example, both MyCompanyEmployeeId and CreditCardNumber are in scope.
For more information, see Data Identifiers, in the SNS Developer Guide.
Inbound and outbound data directions
In addition to the DataIdentifier property, each policy statement also sets the DataDirection property (whose value can be either Inbound or Outbound) as well as the Principal property (whose value can be any combination of AWS accounts, IAM users, and IAM roles).
When you use message data protection for data de-identification and set DataDirection to Inbound, instances of DataIdentifier published by the Principal are masked or redacted before the payload is ingested into the SNS topic. This means that every endpoint subscribed to the topic receives the same modified payload.
When you set DataDirection to Outbound, on the other hand, the payload is ingested into the SNS topic as-is. Then, instances of DataIdentifier are either masked, redacted, or kept as-is for each subscribing Principal in isolation. This means that each endpoint subscribed to the SNS topic might receive a different payload from the topic, with different sensitive data de-identified, according to the data access permissions of its Principal.
The following snippet expands the example data protection policy to include the DataDirection and Principal properties.
To complete the policy statement, you need to set the Operation property, which informs the SNS topic of the action that it should take when it finds instances of DataIdentifer in the outbound payload.
The following snippet expands the data protection policy to include the Operation property, in this case using the Deidentify object, which in turn supports masking and redaction.
In this example, the MaskConfig object instructs the SNS topic to mask instances of CreditCardNumber in Outbound messages to subscriptions created by ReportingApplicationRole, using the MaskWithCharacter value, which in this case is the hash symbol (#). Alternatively, you could have used the RedactConfig object instead, which would have instructed the SNS topic to simply cut the sensitive data off the payload.
The following snippet shows how the outbound payload is masked, in real time, by the SNS topic.
// original message published to the topic:
My credit card number is 4539894458086459
// masked message delivered to subscriptions created by ReportingApplicationRole:
My credit card number is ################
Consider a company where managers use an internal expense report management application where expense reports from employees can be reviewed and approved. Initially, this application depended only on an internal payment application, which in turn connected to an external payment gateway. However, this workload eventually became more complex, because the company started also paying expense reports filed by external contractors. At that point, the company built a mobile application that external contractors could use to view their approved expense reports. An important business requirement for this mobile application was that specific financial and PII data needed to be de-identified in the externally displayed expense reports. Specifically, both the credit card number used for the payment and the internal employee ID that approved the payment had to be masked.
Figure 1: Expense report processing application
To distribute the approved expense reports to both the payment application and the reporting application that backed the mobile application, the company used an SNS topic with a data protection policy. The policy has only one statement, which masks credit card numbers and employee IDs found in the payload. This statement applies only to the IAM role that the company used for subscribing the AWS Lambda function of the reporting application to the SNS topic. This access permission configuration enabled the Lambda function from the payment application to continue receiving the raw data from the SNS topic.
The data protection policy from the previous section addresses this use case. Thus, when a message representing an expense report is published to the SNS topic, the Lambda function in the payment application receives the message as-is, whereas the Lambda function in the reporting application receives the message with the financial and PII data masked.
To automate the provisioning of the resources and the data protection policy of the example expense management use case, we’re going to use CloudFormation templates. You have two options for deploying the resources:
Alternatively, use the following four CloudFormation templates, in order. Allow time for each stack to complete before deploying the next stack.
Deploy using the individual CloudFormation templates in sequence
Prerequisites template: This first template provisions two IAM roles with a managed policy that enables them to create SNS subscriptions and configure the subscriber Lambda functions. You will use these provisioned IAM roles in steps 3 and 4 that follow.
Topic owner template: The second template provisions the SNS topic along with its access policy and data protection policy.
Payment subscriber template: The third template provisions the Lambda function and the corresponding SNS subscription that comprise of the Payment application stack. When prompted, select the PaymentApplicationRole in the Permissions panel before running the template. Moreover, the CloudFormation console will require you to acknowledge that a CloudFormation transform might require access capabilities.
Reporting subscriber template: The final template provisions the Lambda function and the SNS subscription that comprise of the Reporting application stack. When prompted, select the ReportingApplicationRole in the Permissions panel, before running the template. Moreover, the CloudFormation console will require, once again, that you acknowledge that a CloudFormation transform might require access capabilities.
Figure 2: Select IAM role
Now that the application stacks have been deployed, you’re ready to start testing.
Testing the data de-identification operation
Use the following steps to test the example expense management use case.
In the Amazon SNS console, select the ApprovalTopic, then choose to publish a message to it.
In the SNS message body field, enter the following message payload, representing an external contractor expense report, then choose to publish this message:
In the CloudWatch console, select the log group for the PaymentLambdaFunction, then choose to view its latest log stream. Now look for the log stream entry that shows the message payload received by the Lambda function. You will see that no data has been masked in this payload, as the payment application requires raw financial data to process the credit card transaction.
Still in the CloudWatch console, select the log group for the ReportingLambdaFunction, then choose to view its latest log stream. Now look for the log stream entry that shows the message payload received by this Lambda function. You will see that the values for properties credit_card_number and employee_id have been masked, protecting the financial data from leaking into the external reporting application.
As shown, different subscribers received different versions of the message payload, according to their sensitive data access permissions.
Cleaning up the resources
After testing, avoid incurring usage charges by deleting the resources that you created. Open the CloudFormation console and delete the four CloudFormation stacks that you created during the walkthrough.
Conclusion
This post showed how you can use Amazon SNS message data protection to discover and protect sensitive data published to or delivered from your SNS topics. The example use case shows how to create a data protection policy that masks messages delivered to specific subscribers if the payloads contain financial or personally identifiable information.
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on AWS re:Post or contact AWS Support.
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A new Mozilla Foundation report concludes that cars, all of them, have terrible data privacy.
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label—making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.
There’s a lot of details in the report. They’re all bad.
A key part of protecting your organization’s non-public, sensitive data is to understand who can access it and from where. One of the common requirements is to restrict access to authorized users from known locations. To accomplish this, you should be familiar with the expected network access patterns and establish organization-wide guardrails to limit access to known networks. Additionally, you should verify that the credentials associated with your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) principals are only usable within these expected networks. On Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can use the network perimeter to apply network coarse-grained controls on your resources and principals. In this fourth blog post of the Establishing a data perimeter on AWS series, we explore the benefits and implementation considerations of defining your network perimeter.
The network perimeter is a set of coarse-grained controls that help you verify that your identities and resources can only be used from expected networks.
To achieve these security objectives, you first must define what expected networks means for your organization. Expected networks usually include approved networks your employees and applications use to access your resources, such as your corporate IP CIDR range and your VPCs. There are also scenarios where you need to permit access from networks of AWS services acting on your behalf or networks of trusted third-party partners that you integrate with. You should consider all intended data access patterns when you create the definition of expected networks. Other networks are considered unexpected and shouldn’t be allowed access.
Security risks addressed by the network perimeter
The network perimeter helps address the following security risks:
Unintended information disclosure through credential use from non-corporate networks
It’s important to consider the security implications of having developers with preconfigured access stored on their laptops. For example, let’s say that to access an application, a developer uses a command line interface (CLI) to assume a role and uses the temporary credentials to work on a new feature. The developer continues their work at a coffee shop that has great public Wi-Fi while their credentials are still valid. Accessing data through a non-corporate network means that they are potentially bypassing their company’s security controls, which might lead to the unintended disclosure of sensitive corporate data in a public space.
Unintended data access through stolen credentials
Organizations are prioritizing protection from credential theft risks, as threat actors can use stolen credentials to gain access to sensitive data. For example, a developer could mistakenly share credentials from an Amazon EC2 instance CLI access over email. After credentials are obtained, a threat actor can use them to access your resources and potentially exfiltrate your corporate data, possibly leading to reputational risk.
Figure 1 outlines an undesirable access pattern: using an employee corporate credential to access corporate resources (in this example, an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket) from a non-corporate network.
Figure 1: Unintended access to your S3 bucket from outside the corporate network
Implementing the network perimeter
During the network perimeter implementation, you use IAM policies and global condition keys to help you control access to your resources based on which network the API request is coming from. IAM allows you to enforce the origin of a request by making an API call using both identity policies and resource policies.
The following two policies help you control both your principals and resources to verify that the request is coming from your expected network:
Service control policies (SCPs) are policies you can use to manage the maximum available permissions for your principals. SCPs help you verify that your accounts stay within your organization’s access control guidelines.
Resource based policies are policies that are attached to resources in each AWS account. With resource based policies, you can specify who has access to the resource and what actions they can perform on it. For a list of services that support resource based policies, see AWS services that work with IAM.
With the help of these two policy types, you can enforce the control objectives using the following IAM global condition keys:
aws:SourceIp: You can use this condition key to create a policy that only allows request from a specific IP CIDR range. For example, this key helps you define your expected networks as your corporate IP CIDR range.
aws:SourceVpc: This condition key helps you check whether the request comes from the list of VPCs that you specified in the policy. In a policy, this condition key is used to only allow access to an S3 bucket if the VPC where the request originated matches the VPC ID listed in your policy.
aws:SourceVpce: You can use this condition key to check if the request came from one of the VPC endpoints specified in your policy. Adding this key to your policy helps you restrict access to API calls that originate from VPC endpoints that belong to your organization.
aws:ViaAWSService: You can use this key to write a policy to allow an AWS service that uses your credentials to make calls on your behalf. For example, when you upload an object to Amazon S3 with server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) on, S3 needs to encrypt the data on your behalf. To do this, S3 makes a subsequent request to AWS KMS to generate a data key to encrypt the object. The call that S3 makes to AWS KMS is signed with your credentials and originates outside of your network.
aws:PrincipalIsAWSService: This condition key helps you write a policy to allow AWS service principals to access your resources. For example, when you create an AWS CloudTrail trail with an S3 bucket as a destination, CloudTrail uses a service principal, cloudtrail.amazonaws.com, to publish logs to your S3 bucket. The API call from CloudTrail comes from the service network.
The following table summarizes the relationship between the control objectives and the capabilities used to implement the network perimeter.
Control objective
Implemented by using
Primary IAM capability
My resources can only be accessed from expected networks.
My resources can only be accessed from expected networks
Start by implementing the network perimeter on your resources using resource based policies. The perimeter should be applied to all resources that support resource- based policies in each AWS account. With this type of policy, you can define which networks can be used to access the resources, helping prevent access to your company resources in case of valid credentials being used from non-corporate networks.
The following is an example of a resource-based policy for an S3 bucket that limits access only to expected networks using the aws:SourceIp, aws:SourceVpc, aws:PrincipalIsAWSService, and aws:ViaAWSService condition keys. Replace <my-data-bucket>, <my-corporate-cidr>, and <my-vpc> with your information.
The Deny statement in the preceding policy has four condition keys where all conditions must resolve to true to invoke the Deny effect. Use the IfExists condition operator to clearly state that each of these conditions will still resolve to true if the key is not present on the request context.
This policy will deny Amazon S3 actions unless requested from your corporate CIDR range (NotIpAddressIfExists with aws:SourceIp), or from your VPC (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:SourceVpc). Notice that aws:SourceVpc and aws:SourceVpce are only present on the request if the call was made through a VPC endpoint. So, you could also use the aws:SourceVpce condition key in the policy above, however this would mean listing every VPC endpoint in your environment. Since the number of VPC endpoints is greater than the number of VPCs, this example uses the aws:SourceVpc condition key.
This policy also creates a conditional exception for Amazon S3 actions requested by a service principal (BoolIfExists with aws:PrincipalIsAWSService), such as CloudTrail writing events to your S3 bucket, or by an AWS service on your behalf (BoolIfExists with aws:ViaAWSService), such as S3 calling AWS KMS to encrypt or decrypt an object.
Extending the network perimeter on resource
There are cases where you need to extend your perimeter to include AWS services that access your resources from outside your network. For example, if you’re replicating objects using S3 bucket replication, the calls to Amazon S3 originate from the service network outside of your VPC, using a service role. Another case where you need to extend your perimeter is if you integrate with trusted third-party partners that need access to your resources. If you’re using services with the described access pattern in your AWS environment or need to provide access to trusted partners, the policy EnforceNetworkPerimeter that you applied on your S3 bucket in the previous section will deny access to the resource.
In this section, you learn how to extend your network perimeter to include networks of AWS services using service roles to access your resources and trusted third-party partners.
AWS services that use service roles and service-linked roles to access resources on your behalf
Service roles are assumed by AWS services to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, change, and delete a service role from within IAM; this role exists within your AWS account and has an ARN like arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/<RoleName>. A key difference between a service-linked role (SLR) and a service role is that the SLR is linked to a specific AWS service and you can view but not edit the permissions and trust policy of the role. An example is AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer using an SLR to analyze resource metadata. To account for this access pattern, you can exempt roles on the service-linked role dedicated path arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/aws-service-role/*, and for service roles, you can tag the role with the tag network-perimeter-exception set to true.
If you are exempting service roles in your policy based on a tag-value, you must also include a policy to enforce the identity perimeter on your resource as shown in this sample policy. This helps verify that only identities from your organization can access the resource and cannot circumvent your network perimeter controls with network-perimeter-exception tag.
Partners accessing your resources from their own networks
There might be situations where your company needs to grant access to trusted third parties. For example, providing a trusted partner access to data stored in your S3 bucket. You can account for this type of access by using the aws:PrincipalAccount condition key set to the account ID provided by your partner.
The following is an example of a resource-based policy for an S3 bucket that incorporates the two access patterns described above. Replace <my-data-bucket>, <my-corporate-cidr>, <my-vpc>, <third-party-account-a>, <third-party-account-b>, and <my-account-id> with your information.
There are four condition operators in the policy above, and you need all four of them to resolve to true to invoke the Deny effect. Therefore, this policy only allows access to Amazon S3 from expected networks defined as: your corporate IP CIDR range (NotIpAddressIfExists and aws:SourceIp), your VPC (StringNotEqualsIfExists and aws:SourceVpc), networks of AWS service principals (aws:PrincipalIsAWSService), or an AWS service acting on your behalf (aws:ViaAWSService). It also allows access to networks of trusted third-party accounts (StringNotEqualsIfExists and aws:PrincipalAccount:<third-party-account-a>), and AWS services using an SLR to access your resources (ArnNotLikeIfExists and aws:PrincipalArn).
My identities can access resources only from expected networks
Applying the network perimeter on identity can be more challenging because you need to consider not only calls made directly by your principals, but also calls made by AWS services acting on your behalf. As described in access pattern 3 Intermediate IAM roles for data access in this blog post, many AWS services assume an AWS service role you created to perform actions on your behalf. The complicating factor is that even if the service supports VPC-based access to your data — for example AWS Glue jobs can be deployed within your VPC to access data in your S3 buckets — the service might also use the service role to make other API calls outside of your VPC. For example, with AWS Glue jobs, the service uses the service role to deploy elastic network interfaces (ENIs) in your VPC. However, these calls to create ENIs in your VPC are made from the AWS Glue managed network and not from within your expected network. A broad network restriction in your SCP for all your identities might prevent the AWS service from performing tasks on your behalf.
Therefore, the recommended approach is to only apply the perimeter to identities that represent the highest risk of inappropriate use based on other compensating controls that might exist in your environment. These are identities whose credentials can be obtained and misused by threat actors. For example, if you allow your developers access to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) CLI, a developer can obtain credentials from the Amazon EC2 instance profile and use the credentials to access your resources from their own network.
To summarize, to enforce your network perimeter based on identity, evaluate your organization’s security posture and what compensating controls are in place. Then, according to this evaluation, identify which service roles or human roles have the highest risk of inappropriate use, and enforce the network perimeter on those identities by tagging them with data-perimeter-include set to true.
The following policy shows the use of tags to enforce the network perimeter on specific identities. Replace <my-corporate-cidr>, and <my-vpc> with your own information.
The above policy statement uses the Deny effect to limit access to expected networks for identities with the tag data-perimeter-include attached to them (StringEquals and aws:PrincipalTag/data-perimeter-include set to true). This policy will deny access to those identities unless the request is done by an AWS service on your behalf (aws:ViaAWSService), is coming from your corporate CIDR range (NotIpAddressIfExists and aws:SourceIp), or is coming from your VPCs (StringNotEqualsIfExists with the aws:SourceVpc).
Amazon EC2 also uses a special service role, also known as infrastructure role, to decrypt Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). When you mount an encrypted Amazon EBS volume to an EC2 instance, EC2 calls AWS KMS to decrypt the data key that was used to encrypt the volume. The call to AWS KMS is signed by an IAM role, arn:aws:iam::*:role/aws:ec2-infrastructure, which is created in your account by EC2. For this use case, as you can see on the preceding policy, you can use the aws:PrincipalArn condition key to exclude this role from the perimeter.
IAM policy samples
This GitHub repository contains policy examples that illustrate how to implement network perimeter controls. The policy samples don’t represent a complete list of valid access patterns and are for reference only. They’re intended for you to tailor and extend to suit the needs of your environment. Make sure you thoroughly test the provided example policies before implementing them in your production environment.
Conclusion
In this blog post you learned about the elements needed to build the network perimeter, including policy examples and strategies on how to extend that perimeter. You now also know different access patterns used by AWS services that act on your behalf, how to evaluate those access patterns, and how to take a risk-based approach to apply the perimeter based on identities in your organization.
For additional learning opportunities, see the Data perimeters on AWS. This information resource provides additional materials such as a data perimeter workshop, blog posts, whitepapers, and webinar sessions.
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve launched a Landing Zone for the Baseline Informatiebeveiliging Overheid (BIO) framework to support our Dutch customers in their compliance needs with the BIO framework.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers across the Dutch public sector can use AWS certified services with confidence, knowing that the AWS services listed in the certificate adhere to the strict requirements imposed on the consumption of cloud-based services.
Baseline Informatiebeveiliging Overheid
The BIO framework is an information security framework that the four layers of the Dutch public sector are required to adhere to. This means that it’s mandatory for the Dutch central government, all provinces, municipalities, and regional water authorities to be compliant with the BIO framework.
To support AWS customers in demonstrating their compliance with the BIO framework, AWS developed a Landing Zone for the BIO framework. This Landing Zone for the BIO framework is a pre-configured AWS environment that includes a subset of the technical requirements of the BIO framework. It’s a helpful tool that provides a starting point from which customers can further build their own AWS environment.
In addition to the BIO framework, there’s another information security framework designed specifically for the use of cloud services. It is called BIO Thema-uitwerking Clouddiensten. The BIO Thema-uitwerking Clouddiensten is a guidance document for Dutch cloud service consumers to help them formulate controls and objectives when using cloud services. Consumers can view it as an additional control framework on top of the BIO framework.
AWS strives to continuously bring services into scope of its compliance programs to help you meet your architectural and regulatory needs.
To learn more about our compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.
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The CISPE Code of Conduct is the first pan-European, sector-specific code for cloud infrastructure service providers, which received a favorable opinion that it complies with the GDPR. It helps organizations across Europe accelerate the development of GDPR compliant, cloud-based services for consumers, businesses, and institutions.
The accredited monitoring body EY CertifyPoint evaluated AWS on January 26, 2023, and successfully audited 100 certified services. AWS added seven additional services to the current scope in June 2023. As of the date of this blog post, 107 services are in scope of this certification. The Certificate of Compliance that illustrates AWS compliance status is available on the CISPE Public Register. For up-to-date information, including when additional services are added, search the CISPE Public Register by entering AWS as the Seller of Record; or see the AWS CISPE page.
AWS strives to bring additional services into the scope of its compliance programs to help you meet your architectural and regulatory needs. If you have questions or feedback about AWS compliance with CISPE, reach out to your AWS account team.
In the AWS Security Profile series, we interview Amazon Web Services (AWS) thought leaders who help keep our customers safe and secure. This interview features Ritesh Desai, General Manager, AWS Secrets Manager, and re:Inforce 2023 session speaker, who shares thoughts on data protection, cloud security, secrets management, and more.
What do you do in your current role and how long have you been at AWS?
I’ve been in the tech industry for more than 20 years and joined AWS about three years ago. Currently, I lead our Secrets Management organization, which includes the AWS Secrets Manager service.
How did you get started in the data protection and secrets management space? What about it piqued your interest?
I’ve always been excited at the prospect of solving complex customer problems with simple technical solutions. Working across multiple small to large organizations in the past, I’ve seen similar challenges with secret sprawl and lack of auditing and monitoring tools. Centralized secrets management is a challenge for customers. As organizations evolve from start-up to enterprise level, they can end up with multiple solutions across organizational units to manage their secrets.
Being part of the Secrets Manager team gives me the opportunity to learn about our customers’ unique needs and help them protect access to their most sensitive digital assets in the cloud, at scale.
Why does secrets management matter to customers today?
Customers use secrets like database passwords and API keys to protect their most sensitive data, so it’s extremely important for them to invest in a centralized secrets management solution. Through secrets management, customers can securely store, retrieve, rotate, and audit secrets.
What’s been the most dramatic change you’ve seen in the data protection and secrets management space?
Secrets management is becoming increasingly important for customers, but customers now have to deal with complex environments that include single cloud providers like AWS, multi-cloud setups, hybrid (cloud and on-premises) environments, and only on-premises instances.
Customers tell us that they want centralized secrets management solutions that meet their expectations across these environments. They have two distinct goals here. First, they want a central secrets management tool or service to manage their secrets. Second, they want their secrets to be available closer to the applications where they’re run. IAM Roles Anywhere provides a secure way for on-premises servers to obtain temporary AWS credentials and removes the need to create and manage long-term AWS credentials. Now, customers can use IAM Roles Anywhere to access their Secrets Manager secrets from workloads running outside of AWS. Secrets Manager also launched a program in which customers can manage secrets in third-party secrets management solutions to replicate secrets to Secrets Manager for their AWS workloads. We’re continuing to invest in these areas to make it simpler for customers to manage their secrets in their tools of choice, while providing access to their secrets closer to where their applications are run.
With AWS re:Inforce 2023 around the corner, what will your session focus on? What do you hope attendees will take away from your session?
I’m speaking in a session called “Using AWS data protection services for innovation and automation” (DAP305) alongside one of our senior security specialist solutions architects on the topic of secrets management at scale. In the session, we’ll walk through a sample customer use case that highlights how to use data protection services like AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA), and Secrets Manager to help build securely and help meet organizational security and compliance expectations. Attendees will walk away with a clear picture of the services that AWS offers to protect sensitive data, and how they can use these services together to protect secrets at scale.
Where do you see the secrets management space heading in the future?
Traditionally, secrets management was addressed after development, rather than being part of the design and development process. This placement created an inherent clash between development teams who wanted to put the application in the hands of end users, and the security admins who wanted to verify that the application met security expectations. This resulted in longer timelines to get to market. Involving security in the mix only after development is complete, is simply too late. Security should enable business, not restrict it.
Organizations are slowly adopting the culture that “Security is everyone’s responsibility.” I expect more and more organizations will take the step to “shift-left” and embed security early in the development lifecycle. In the near future, I expect to see organizations prioritize the automation of security capabilities in the development process to help detect, remediate, and eliminate potential risks by taking security out of human hands.
Is there something you wish customers would ask you about more often?
I’m always happy to talk to customers to help them think through how to incorporate secure-by-design in their planning process. There are many situations where decisions could end up being expensive to reverse. AWS has a lot of experience working across a multitude of use cases for customers as they adopt secrets management solutions. I’d love to talk more to customers early in their cloud adoption journey, about the best practices that they should adopt and potential pitfalls to avoid, when they make decisions about secrets management and data protection.
How about outside of work—any hobbies?
I’m an avid outdoors person, and living in Seattle has given me and my family the opportunity to trek and hike through the beautiful landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. I’ve also been a consistent Tough Mudder-er for the last 5 years. The other thing that I spend my time on is working as an amateur actor for a friend’s nonprofit theater production, helping in any way I can.
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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, Thales, Entrust, Fortanix, DuoKey, and HashiCorp have launched XKS implementations, and Salesforce, Atos, 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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A full conference pass is $1,099. Register today with the code secure150off to receive a limited time $150 discount, while supplies last.
AWS re:Inforce is fast approaching, and this post can help you plan your agenda. AWS re:Inforce is a security learning conference where you can gain skills and confidence in cloud security, compliance, identity, and privacy. As a re:Inforce attendee, you have access to hundreds of technical and non-technical sessions, an Expo featuring AWS experts and security partners with AWS Security Competencies, and keynote and leadership sessions featuring Security leadership. AWS re:Inforce 2023 will take place in-person in Anaheim, CA, on June 13 and 14. re:Inforce 2023 features content in the following six areas:
Data Protection
Governance, Risk, and Compliance
Identity and Access Management
Network and Infrastructure Security
Threat Detection and Incident Response
Application Security
The data protection track will showcase services and tools that you can use to help achieve your data protection goals in an efficient, cost-effective, and repeatable manner. You will hear from AWS customers and partners about how they protect data in transit, at rest, and in use. Learn how experts approach data management, key management, cryptography, data security, data privacy, and encryption. This post will highlight of some of the data protection offerings that you can add to your agenda. To learn about sessions from across the content tracks, see the AWS re:Inforce catalog preview.
“re:Inforce is a great opportunity for us to hear directly from our customers, understand their unique needs, and use customer input to define solutions that protect sensitive data. We also use this opportunity to deliver content focused on the latest security research and trends, and I am looking forward to seeing you all there. Security is everyone’s job, and at AWS, it is job zero.” — Ritesh Desai, General Manager, AWS Secrets Manager
Breakout sessions, chalk talks, and lightning talks
DAP301: Moody’s database secrets management at scale with AWS Secrets Manager Many organizations must rotate database passwords across fleets of on-premises and cloud databases to meet various regulatory standards and enforce security best practices. One-time solutions such as scripts and runbooks for password rotation can be cumbersome. Moody’s sought a custom solution that satisfies the goal of managing database passwords using well-established DevSecOps processes. In this session, Moody’s discusses how they successfully used AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Lambda, along with open-source CI/CD system Jenkins, to implement database password lifecycle management across their fleet of databases spanning nonproduction and production environments.
DAP401: Security design of the AWS Nitro System The AWS Nitro System is the underlying platform for all modern Amazon EC2 instances. In this session, learn about the inner workings of the Nitro System and discover how it is used to help secure your most sensitive workloads. Explore the unique design of the Nitro System’s purpose-built hardware and software components and how they operate together. Dive into specific elements of the Nitro System design, including eliminating the possibility of operator access and providing a hardware root of trust and cryptographic system integrity protections. Learn important aspects of the Amazon EC2 tenant isolation model that provide strong mitigation against potential side-channel issues.
DAP322: Integrating AWS Private CA with SPIRE and Ottr at Coinbase Coinbase is a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency. This lightning talk provides an overview of how Coinbase uses AWS services, including AWS Private CA, AWS Secrets Manager, and Amazon RDS, to build out a Zero Trust architecture with SPIRE for service-to-service authentication. Learn how short-lived certificates are issued safely at scale for X.509 client authentication (i.e., Amazon MSK) with Ottr.
DAP331: AWS Private CA: Building better resilience and revocation techniques In this chalk talk, explore the concept of PKI resiliency and certificate revocation for AWS Private CA, and discover the reasons behind multi-Region resilient private PKI. Dive deep into different revocation methods like certificate revocation list (CRL) and Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) and compare their advantages and limitations. Leave this talk with the ability to better design resiliency and revocations.
DAP231: Securing your application data with AWS storage services Critical applications that enterprises have relied on for years were designed for the database block storage and unstructured file storage prevalent on premises. Now, organizations are growing with cloud services and want to bring their security best practices along. This chalk talk explores the features for securing application data using Amazon FSx, Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). Learn about the fundamentals of securing your data, including encryption, access control, monitoring, and backup and recovery. Dive into use cases for different types of workloads, such as databases, analytics, and content management systems.
Hands-on sessions (builders’ sessions and workshops)
DAP353: Privacy-enhancing data collaboration with AWS Clean Rooms Organizations increasingly want to protect sensitive information and reduce or eliminate raw data sharing. To help companies meet these requirements, AWS has built AWS Clean Rooms. This service allows organizations to query their collective data without needing to expose the underlying datasets. In this builders’ session, get hands-on with AWS Clean Rooms preventative and detective privacy-enhancing controls to mitigate the risk of exposing sensitive data.
DAP371: Post-quantum crypto with AWS KMS TLS endpoints, SDKs, and libraries This hands-on workshop demonstrates post-quantum cryptographic algorithms and compares their performance and size to classical ones. Learn how to use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) with the AWS SDK for Java to establish a quantum-safe tunnel to transfer the most critical digital secrets and protect them from a theoretical computer targeting these communications in the future. Find out how the tunnels use classical and quantum-resistant key exchanges to offer the best of both worlds, and discover the performance implications.
DAP271: Data protection risk assessment for AWS workloads Join this workshop to learn how to simplify the process of selecting the right tools to mitigate your data protection risks while reducing costs. Follow the data protection lifecycle by conducting a risk assessment, selecting the effective controls to mitigate those risks, deploying and configuring AWS services to implement those controls, and performing continuous monitoring for audits. Leave knowing how to apply the right controls to mitigate your business risks using AWS advanced services for encryption, permissions, and multi-party processing.
If these sessions look interesting to you, join us in California by registering for re:Inforce 2023. We look forward to seeing you there!
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In the AWS Security Profile — Cryptography Edition series, we interview Amazon Web Services (AWS) thought leaders who help keep our customers safe and secure. This interview features Panos Kampanakis, Principal Security Engineer, AWS Cryptography. Panos shares thoughts on data protection, cloud security, post-quantum cryptography, and more.
What do you do in your current role and how long have you been at AWS?
I have been with AWS for two years. I started as a Technical Program Manager in AWS Cryptography, where I led some AWS Cryptography projects related to cryptographic libraries and FIPS, but I’m currently working as a Principal Security Engineer on a team that focuses on applied cryptography, research, and cryptographic software. I also participate in standardization efforts in the security space, especially in cryptographic applications. It’s a very active space that can consume as much time as you have to offer.
How did you get started in the data protection/ cryptography space? What about it piqued your interest?
I always found cybersecurity fascinating. The idea of proactively focusing on security and enabling engineers to protect their assets against malicious activity was exciting. After working in organizations that deal with network security, application security, vulnerability management, and security information sharing, I found myself going back to what I did in graduate school: applied cryptography.
Cryptography is a constantly evolving, fundamental area of security that requires breadth of technical knowledge and understanding of mathematics. It provides a challenging environment for those that like to constantly learn. Cryptography is so critical to the security and privacy of data and assets that it is top of mind for the private and public sector worldwide.
How do you explain your job to your non-tech friends?
I usually tell them that my work focuses on protecting digital assets, information, and the internet from malicious actors. With cybersecurity incidents constantly in the news, it’s an easy picture to paint. Some of my non-technical friends still joke that I work as a security guard!
What makes cryptography exciting to you?
Cryptography is fundamental to security. It’s critical for the protection of data and many other secure information use cases. It combines deep mathematical topics, data information, practical performance challenges that threaten deployments at scale, compliance with various requirements, and subtle potential security issues. It’s certainly a challenging space that keeps evolving. Post-quantum or privacy preserving cryptography are examples of areas that have gained a lot of attention recently and have been consistently growing.
Given the consistent evolution of security in general, this is an important and impactful space where you can work on challenging topics. Additionally, working in cryptography, you are surrounded by intelligent people who you can learn from.
AWS has invested in the migration to post-quantum cryptography by contributing to post-quantum key agreement and post-quantum signature schemes to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of customer data. What should customers do to prepare for post-quantum cryptography?
There are a few things that customers can do while waiting for the ratification of the new quantum-safe algorithms and their deployment. For example, you can inventory the use of asymmetric cryptography in your applications and software. Admittedly, this is not a simple task, but with proper subject matter expertise and instrumentation where necessary, you can identify where you’re using quantum-vulnerable algorithms in order to prioritize the uses. AWS is doing this exercise to have a prioritized plan for the upcoming migration.
You can also study and experiment with the potential impact of these new algorithms in critical use cases. There have been many studies on transport protocols like TLS, virtual private networks (VPNs), Secure Shell (SSH), and QUIC, but organizations might have unique uses that haven’t been accounted for yet. For example, a firm that specializes in document signing might require efficient signature methods with small size constraints, so deploying Dilithium, NIST’s preferred quantum-safe signature, could come at a cost. Evaluating its impact and performance implications would be important. If you write your own crypto software, you can also strive for algorithm agility, which would allow you to swap in new algorithms when they become available.
More importantly, you should push your vendors, your hardware suppliers, the software and open-source community, and cloud providers to adjust and enable their solutions to become quantum-safe in the near future.
What’s been the most dramatic change you’ve seen in the data protection and post-quantum cryptography landscape?
The transition from typical cryptographic algorithms to ones that can operate on encrypted data is an important shift in the last decade. This is a field that’s still seeing great development. It’s interesting how the power of data has brought forward a whole new area of being able to operate on encrypted information so that we can benefit from the analytics. For more information on the work that AWS is doing in this space, see Cryptographic Computing.
In terms of post-quantum cryptography, it’s exciting to see how an important potential risk brought a community from academia, industry, and research together to collaborate and bring new schemes to life. It’s also interesting how existing cryptography has reached optimal efficiency levels that the new cryptographic primitives sometimes cannot meet, which pushes the industry to reconsider some of our uses. Sometimes the industry might overestimate the potential impact of quantum computing to technology, but I don’t believe we should disregard the effect of heavier algorithms on performance, our carbon footprint, energy consumption, and cost. We ought to aim for efficient solutions that don’t undermine security.
Where do you see post-quantum cryptography heading in the future?
Post-quantum cryptography has received a lot of attention, and a transition is about to start ramping up after we have ratified algorithms. Although it’s sometimes considered a Herculian effort, some use cases can transition smoothly.
AWS and other industry peers and researchers have already evaluated some post-quantum migration strategies. With proper prioritization and focus, we can address some of the most important applications and gradually transition the rest. There might be some applications that will have no clear path to a post-quantum future, but most will. At AWS, we are committed to making the transitions necessary to protect our customer data against future threats.
What are you currently working on that you look forward to sharing with customers’?
I’m currently focused on bringing post-quantum algorithms to our customers’ cryptographic use cases. I’m looking into the challenges that this upcoming migration will bring and participating in standards and industry collaborations that will hopefully enable a simpler transition for everyone.
I also engage on various topics with our cryptographic libraries teams (for example, AWS-LC and s2n-tls). We build these libraries with security and performance in mind, and they are used in software across AWS.
Additionally, I work with some AWS service teams to help enable compliance with various cryptographic requirements and regulations.
Is there something you wish customers would ask you about more often?
I wish customers asked more often about provable security and how to integrate such solutions in their software. This is a fascinating field that can prevent serious issues where cryptography can go wrong. It’s a complicated topic. I would like for customers to become more aware of the importance of provable security especially in open-source software before adopting it in their solutions. Using provably secure software that is designed for performance and compliance with crypto requirements is beneficial to everyone.
I also wish customers asked more about why AWS made certain choices when deploying new mechanisms. In areas of active research, it’s often simpler to experimentally build a proof-of-concept of a new mechanism and test and prove its performance in a controlled benchmark scenario. On the other hand, it’s usually not trivial to deploy new solutions at scale (especially given the size and technological breadth of AWS), to help ensure backwards compatibility, commit to supporting these solutions in the long run, and make sure they’re suitable for various uses. I wish I had more opportunities to go over with customers the effort that goes into vetting and deploying new mechanisms at scale.
You have frequently contributed to cybersecurity publications, what is your favorite recent article and why?
I used to play basketball when I was younger, but I no longer have time. I spend most of my time with my family and little toddlers who have infinite amounts of energy. When I find an opportunity, I like reading books and short stories or watching quality films.
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Navigating data protection laws around the world is no simple task. Today, I’m pleased to announce that AWS is expanding the scope of the AWS Data Processing Addendum (Global AWS DPA) so that it applies globally whenever customers use AWS services to process personal data, regardless of which data protection laws apply to that processing. AWS is proud to be the first major cloud provider to adopt this global approach to help you meet your compliance needs for data protection.
The Global AWS DPA is designed to help you satisfy requirements under data protection laws worldwide, without having to create separate country-specific data processing agreements for every location where you use AWS services. By introducing this global, one-stop addendum, we are simplifying contracting procedures and helping to reduce the time that you spend assessing contractual data privacy requirements on a country-by-country basis.
If you have signed a copy of the previous AWS General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) DPA, then you do not need to take any action and can continue to rely on that addendum to satisfy data processing requirements. AWS is always innovating to help you meet your compliance obligations wherever you operate. We’re confident that this expanded Global AWS DPA will help you on your journey. If you have questions or need more information, see Data Protection & Privacy at AWS and GDPR Center.
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Companies that store and process data on Amazon Web Services (AWS) want to prevent transfers of that data to or from locations outside of their company’s control. This is to support security strategies, such as data loss prevention, or to comply with the terms and conditions set forth by various regulatory and privacy agreements. On AWS, a resource perimeter is a set of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) features and capabilities that you can use to build your defense-in-depth protection against unintended data transfers. In this third blog post of the Establishing a data perimeter on AWS series, we review the benefits and implementation considerations when you define your resource perimeter.
The resource perimeter is one of the three perimeters in the data perimeter framework on AWS and has the following two control objectives:
My identities can access only trusted resources – This helps to ensure that IAM principals that belong to your AWS Organizations organization can access only the resources that you trust.
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network – This helps to ensure that only resources that you trust can be accessed through expected networks, regardless of the principal that is making the API call.
Trusted resources are the AWS resources, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets and objects or Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topics, that are owned by your organization and in which you store and process your data. Additionally, there are resources outside your organization that your identities or AWS services acting on your behalf might need to access. You will need to consider these access patterns when you define your resource perimeter.
Security risks addressed by the resource perimeter
The resource perimeter helps address three main security risks.
Unintended data disclosure through use of corporate credentials — Your developers might have a personal AWS account that is not part of your organization. In that account, they could configure a resource with a resource-based policy that allows their corporate credentials to interact with the resource. For example, they could write an S3 bucket policy that allows them to upload objects by using their corporate credentials. This could allow the intentional or unintentional transfer of data from your corporate environment — your on-premises network or virtual private cloud (VPC) — to their personal account. While you advance through your least privilege journey, you should make sure that access to untrusted resources is prohibited, regardless of the permissions granted by identity-based policies that are attached to your IAM principals. Figure 1 illustrates an unintended access pattern where your employee uses an identity from your organization to move data from your on-premises or AWS environment to an S3 bucket in a non-corporate AWS account.
Figure 1: Unintended data transfer to an S3 bucket outside of your organization by your identities
Unintended data disclosure through non-corporate credentials usage — There is a risk that developers could introduce personal IAM credentials to your corporate network and attempt to move company data to personal AWS resources. We discussed this security risk in a previous blog post: Establishing a data perimeter on AWS: Allow only trusted identities to access company data. In that post, we described how to use the aws:PrincipalOrgID condition key to prevent the use of non-corporate credentials to move data into an untrusted location. In the current post, we will show you how to implement resource perimeter controls as a defense-in-depth approach to mitigate this risk.
Unintended data infiltration — There are situations where your developers might start the solution development process using commercial datasets, tooling, or software and decide to copy them from repositories, such as those hosted on public S3 buckets. This could introduce malicious components into your corporate environment, your on-premises network, or VPCs. Establishing the resource perimeter to only allow access to trusted resources from your network can help mitigate this risk. Figure 2 illustrates the access pattern where an employee with corporate credentials downloads assets from an S3 bucket outside of your organization.
Figure 2: Unintended data infiltration
Implement the resource perimeter
To achieve the resource perimeter control objectives, you can implement guardrails in your AWS environment by using the following AWS policy types:
Service control policies (SCPs) – Organization policies that are used to centrally manage and set the maximum available permissions for your IAM principals. SCPs help you ensure that your accounts stay within your organization’s access control guidelines. In the context of the resource perimeter, you will use SCPs to help prevent access to untrusted resources from AWS principals that belong to your organization.
VPC endpoint policy – An IAM resource-based policy that is attached to a VPC endpoint to control which principals, actions, and resources can be accessed through a VPC endpoint. In the context of the resource perimeter, VPC endpoint policies are used to validate that the resource the principal is trying to access belongs to your organization.
The condition key used to constrain access to resources in your organization is aws:ResourceOrgID. You can set this key in an SCP or VPC endpoint policy. The following table summarizes the relationship between the control objectives and the AWS capabilities used to implement the resource perimeter.
Control objective
Implemented by using
Primary IAM capability
My identities can access only trusted resources
SCPs
aws:ResourceOrgID
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network
VPC endpoint policies
aws:ResourceOrgID
In the next section, you will learn how to use the IAM capabilities listed in the preceding table to implement each control objective of the resource perimeter.
My identities can access only trusted resources
The following is an example of an SCP that limits all actions to only the resources that belong to your organization. Replace <MY-ORG-ID> with your information.
In this policy, notice the use of the negated condition key StringNotEqualsIfExists. This means that this condition will evaluate to true and the policy will deny API calls if the organization identifier of the resource that is being accessed differs from the one specified in the policy. It also means that this policy will deny API calls if the resource being accessed belongs to a standalone account, which isn’t part of an organization. The negated condition operators in the Deny statement mean that the condition still evaluates to true if the key is not present in the request; however, as a best practice, I added IfExists to the end of the StringNotEquals operator to clearly express the intent in the policy.
Note that for a permission to be allowed for a specific account, a statement that allows access must exist at every level of the hierarchy of your organization.
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network
You can achieve this objective by combining the SCP we just reviewed with the use of aws:PrincipalOrgID in your VPC endpoint policies, as shown in the Establishing a data perimeter on AWS: Allow only trusted identities to access company data blog post. However, as a defense in depth, you can also apply resource perimeter controls on your networks by using aws:ResourceOrgID in your VPC endpoint policies.
The following is an example of a VPC endpoint policy that allows access to all actions but limits access to only trusted resources and identities that belong to your organization. Replace <MY-ORG-ID> with your information.
The preceding VPC endpoint policy uses the StringEquals condition operator. To invoke the Allow effect, the principal making the API call and the resource they are trying to access both need to belong to your organization. Compared to the SCP example that we reviewed earlier, your intent for this policy is different — you want to make sure that the Allow condition evaluates to true only if the specified key exists in the request. Additionally, VPC endpoint policies apply to principals, as long as their request flows through the VPC endpoint.
In VPC endpoint policies, you do not grant permissions; rather, you define the maximum allowed access through the network. Therefore, this policy uses an Allow effect.
Extend your resource perimeter
The previous two policies help you ensure that your identities and networks can only be used to access AWS resources that belong to your organization. However, your company might require that you extend your resource perimeter to also include AWS owned resources — resources that do not belong to your organization and that are accessed by your principals or by AWS services acting on your behalf. For example, if you use the AWS Service Catalog in your environment, the service creates and uses Amazon S3 buckets that are owned by the service to store products. To allow your developers to successfully provision AWS Service Catalog products, your resource perimeter needs to account for this access pattern. The following statement shows how to account for the service catalog access pattern. Replace <MY-ORG-ID> with your information.
Note that the EnforceResourcePerimeter statement in the SCP was modified to exclude s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, and s3:PutObjectAcl actions from its effect (NotAction element). This is because these actions are performed by the Service Catalog to access service-owned S3 buckets. These actions are then restricted in the ExtendResourcePerimeter statement, which includes two negated condition keys. The second statement denies the previously mentioned S3 actions unless the resource that is being accessed belongs to your organization (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:ResourceOrgID), or the actions are performed by Service Catalog on your behalf (ForAllValues:StringNotEquals with aws:CalledVia). The aws:CalledVia condition key compares the services specified in the policy with the services that made requests on behalf of the IAM principal by using that principal’s credentials. In the case of the Service Catalog, the credentials of a principal who launches a product are used to access S3 buckets that are owned by the Service Catalog.
It is important to highlight that we are purposely not using the aws:ViaAWSService condition key in the preceding policy. This is because when you extend your resource perimeter, we recommend that you restrict access to only calls to buckets that are accessed by the service you are using.
You might also need to extend your resource perimeter to include the third-party resources of your partners. For example, you could be working with business partners that require your principals to upload or download data to or from S3 buckets that belong to their account. In this case, you can use the aws:ResourceAccount condition key in your resource perimeter policy to specify resources that belong to the trusted third-party account.
The following is an example of an SCP that accounts for access to the Service Catalog and third-party partner resources. Replace <MY-ORG-ID> and <THIRD-PARTY-ACCOUNT> with your information.
To account for access to trusted third-party account resources, the condition StringNotEqualsIfExists in the ExtendResourcePerimeter statement now also contains the condition key aws:ResourceAccount. Now, the second statement denies the previously mentioned S3 actions unless the resource that is being accessed belongs to your organization (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:ResourceOrgID), to a trusted third-party account (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:ResourceAccount), or the actions are performed by Service Catalog on your behalf (ForAllValues:StringNotEquals with aws:CalledVia).
The next policy example demonstrates how to extend your resource perimeter to permit access to resources that are owned by your trusted third parties through the networks that you control. This is required if applications running in your VPC or on-premises need to be able to access a dataset that is created and maintained in your business partner AWS account. Similar to the SCP example, you can use the aws:ResourceAccount condition key in your VPC endpoint policy to account for this access pattern. Replace <MY-ORG-ID>, <THIRD-PARTY-ACCOUNT>, and <THIRD-PARTY-RESOURCE-ARN> with your information.
The second statement, AllowRequestsByOrgsIdentitiesToThirdPartyResources, in the updated VPC endpoint policy allows s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, and s3:PutObjectAcl actions on trusted third-party resources (StringEquals with aws:ResourceAccount) by principals that belong to your organization (StringEquals with aws:PrincipalOrgID).
Note that you do not need to modify your VPC endpoint policy to support the previously discussed Service Catalog operations. This is because calls to Amazon S3 made by Service Catalog on your behalf originate from the Service Catalog service network and do not traverse your VPC endpoint. However, you should consider access patterns that are similar to the Service Catalog example when defining your trusted resources. To learn about services with similar access patterns, see the IAM policy samples section later in this post.
Our GitHub repository contains policy examples that illustrate how to implement perimeter controls for a variety of AWS services. The policy examples in the repository are for reference only. You will need to tailor them to suit the specific needs of your AWS environment.
Conclusion
In this blog post, you learned about the resource perimeter, the control objectives achieved by the perimeter, and how to write SCPs and VPC endpoint policies that help achieve these objectives for your organization. You also learned how to extend your perimeter to include AWS service-owned resources and your third-party partner-owned resources.
For additional learning opportunities, see the Data perimeters on AWS page. This information resource provides additional materials such as a data perimeter workshop, blog posts, whitepapers, and webinar sessions.
If you have questions, comments, or concerns, contact AWS Support or browse AWS re:Post. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.
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AWS re:Invent returned to Las Vegas, Nevada, November 28 to December 2, 2022. After a virtual event in 2020 and a hybrid 2021 edition, spirits were high as over 51,000 in-person attendees returned to network and learn about the latest AWS innovations.
Now in its 11th year, the conference featured 5 keynotes, 22 leadership sessions, and more than 2,200 breakout sessions and hands-on labs at 6 venues over 5 days.
With well over 100 service and feature announcements—and innumerable best practices shared by AWS executives, customers, and partners—distilling highlights is a challenge. From a security perspective, three key themes emerged.
Turn data into actionable insights
Security teams are always looking for ways to increase visibility into their security posture and uncover patterns to make more informed decisions. However, as AWS Vice President of Data and Machine Learning, Swami Sivasubramanian, pointed out during his keynote, data often exists in silos; it isn’t always easy to analyze or visualize, which can make it hard to identify correlations that spark new ideas.
“Data is the genesis for modern invention.” – Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS VP of Data and Machine Learning
At AWS re:Invent, we launched new features and services that make it simpler for security teams to store and act on data. One such service is Amazon Security Lake, which brings together security data from cloud, on-premises, and custom sources in a purpose-built data lake stored in your account. The service, which is now in preview, automates the sourcing, aggregation, normalization, enrichment, and management of security-related data across an entire organization for more efficient storage and query performance. It empowers you to use the security analytics solutions of your choice, while retaining control and ownership of your security data.
Amazon Security Lake has adopted the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), which AWS cofounded with a number of organizations in the cybersecurity industry. The OCSF helps standardize and combine security data from a wide range of security products and services, so that it can be shared and ingested by analytics tools. More than 37 AWS security partners have announced integrations with Amazon Security Lake, enhancing its ability to transform security data into a powerful engine that helps drive business decisions and reduce risk. With Amazon Security Lake, analysts and engineers can gain actionable insights from a broad range of security data and improve threat detection, investigation, and incident response processes.
Strengthen security programs
According to Gartner, by 2026, at least 50% of C-Level executives will have performance requirements related to cybersecurity risk built into their employment contracts. Security is top of mind for organizations across the globe, and as AWS CISO CJ Moses emphasized during his leadership session, we are continuously building new capabilities to help our customers meet security, risk, and compliance goals.
In addition to Amazon Security Lake, several new AWS services announced during the conference are designed to make it simpler for builders and security teams to improve their security posture in multiple areas.
Identity and networking
Authorization is a key component of applications. Amazon Verified Permissions is a scalable, fine-grained permissions management and authorization service for custom applications that simplifies policy-based access for developers and centralizes access governance. The new service gives developers a simple-to-use policy and schema management system to define and manage authorization models. The policy-based authorization system that Amazon Verified Permissions offers can shorten development cycles by months, provide a consistent user experience across applications, and facilitate integrated auditing to support stringent compliance and regulatory requirements.
Additional services that make it simpler to define authorization and service communication include Amazon VPC Lattice, an application-layer service that consistently connects, monitors, and secures communications between your services, and AWS Verified Access, which provides secure access to corporate applications without a virtual private network (VPN).
Threat detection and monitoring
Monitoring for malicious activity and anomalous behavior just got simpler. Amazon GuardDuty RDS Protection expands the threat detection capabilities of GuardDuty by using tailored machine learning (ML) models to detect suspicious logins to Amazon Aurora databases. You can enable the feature with a single click in the GuardDuty console, with no agents to manually deploy, no data sources to enable, and no permissions to configure. When RDS Protection detects a potentially suspicious or anomalous login attempt that indicates a threat to your database instance, GuardDuty generates a new finding with details about the potentially compromised database instance. You can view GuardDuty findings in AWS Security Hub, Amazon Detective (if enabled), and Amazon EventBridge, allowing for integration with existing security event management or workflow systems.
To bolster vulnerability management processes, Amazon Inspector now supports AWS Lambda functions, adding automated vulnerability assessments for serverless compute workloads. With this expanded capability, Amazon Inspector automatically discovers eligible Lambda functions and identifies software vulnerabilities in application package dependencies used in the Lambda function code. Actionable security findings are aggregated in the Amazon Inspector console, and pushed to Security Hub and EventBridge to automate workflows.
Data protection and privacy
The first step to protecting data is to find it. Amazon Macie now automatically discovers sensitive data, providing continual, cost-effective, organization-wide visibility into where sensitive data resides across your Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) estate. With this new capability, Macie automatically and intelligently samples and analyzes objects across your S3 buckets, inspecting them for sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, and AWS credentials. Macie then builds and maintains an interactive data map of your sensitive data in S3 across your accounts and Regions, and provides a sensitivity score for each bucket. This helps you identify and remediate data security risks without manual configuration and reduce monitoring and remediation costs.
Encryption is a critical tool for protecting data and building customer trust. The launch of the end-to-end encrypted enterprise communication service AWS Wickr offers advanced security and administrative controls that can help you protect sensitive messages and files from unauthorized access, while working to meet data retention requirements.
Management and governance
Maintaining compliance with regulatory, security, and operational best practices as you provision cloud resources is key. AWS Config rules, which evaluate the configuration of your resources, have now been extended to support proactive mode, so that they can be incorporated into infrastructure-as-code continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to help identify noncompliant resources prior to provisioning. This can significantly reduce time spent on remediation.
Managing the controls needed to meet your security objectives and comply with frameworks and standards can be challenging. To make it simpler, we launched comprehensive controls management with AWS Control Tower. You can use it to apply managed preventative, detective, and proactive controls to accounts and organizational units (OUs) by service, control objective, or compliance framework. You can also use AWS Control Tower to turn on Security Hub detective controls across accounts in an OU. This new set of features reduces the time that it takes to define and manage the controls required to meet specific objectives, such as supporting the principle of least privilege, restricting network access, and enforcing data encryption.
Do more with less
As we work through macroeconomic conditions, security leaders are facing increased budgetary pressures. In his opening keynote, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky emphasized the effects of the pandemic, inflation, supply chain disruption, energy prices, and geopolitical events that continue to impact organizations.
Now more than ever, it is important to maintain your security posture despite resource constraints. Citing specific customer examples, Selipsky underscored how the AWS Cloud can help organizations move faster and more securely. By moving to the cloud, agricultural machinery manufacturer Agco reduced costs by 78% while increasing data retrieval speed, and multinational HVAC provider Carrier Global experienced a 40% reduction in the cost of running mission-critical ERP systems.
“If you’re looking to tighten your belt, the cloud is the place to do it.” – Adam Selipsky, AWS CEO
Security teams can do more with less by maximizing the value of existing controls, and bolstering security monitoring and analytics capabilities. Services and features announced during AWS re:Invent—including Amazon Security Lake, sensitive data discovery with Amazon Macie, support for Lambda functions in Amazon Inspector, Amazon GuardDuty RDS Protection, and more—can help you get more out of the cloud and address evolving challenges, no matter the economic climate.
Security is our top priority
AWS re:Invent featured many more highlights on a variety of topics, such as Amazon EventBridge Pipes and the pre-announcement of GuardDuty EKS Runtime protection, as well as Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels’ keynote, and the security partnerships showcased on the Expo floor. It was a whirlwind week, but one thing is clear: AWS is working harder than ever to make our services better and to collaborate on solutions that ease the path to proactive security, so that you can focus on what matters most—your business.
If you’re a SaaS vendor, you may need to store and process personal and sensitive data for large numbers of customers across different geographies. When processing sensitive data at scale, you have an increased responsibility to secure this data end-to-end. Client-side encryption of data, such as your customers’ contact information, provides an additional mechanism that can help you protect your customers and earn their trust.
Amazon DynamoDB supports data encryption at rest using encryption keys stored in AWS KMS. This functionality helps reduce operational burden and complexity involved in protecting sensitive data. In this post, you’ll learn about the benefits of adding client-side encryption to achieve end-to-end encryption in transit and at rest for your data, from its source to storage in DynamoDB. Client-side encryption helps ensure that your plaintext data isn’t available to any third party, including AWS.
You can use the Amazon DynamoDB Encryption Client to implement client-side encryption with DynamoDB. In the solution in this post, client-side encryption refers to the cryptographic operations that are performed on the application-side in the application’s Lambda function, before the data is sent to or retrieved from DynamoDB. The solution in this post uses the DynamoDB Encryption Client with the Direct KMS Materials Provider so that your data is encrypted by using AWS KMS. However, the underlying concept of the solution is not limited to the use of the DynamoDB Encryption Client, you can apply it to any client-side use of AWS KMS, for example using the AWS Encryption SDK.
For detailed information about using the DynamoDB Encryption Client, see the blog post How to encrypt and sign DynamoDB data in your application. This is a great place to start if you are not yet familiar with DynamoDB Encryption Client. If you are unsure about whether you should use client-side encryption, see Client-side and server-side encryption in the Amazon DynamoDB Encryption Client Developer Guide to help you with the decision.
AWS KMS encryption context
AWS KMS gives you the ability to add an additional layer of authentication for your AWS KMS API decrypt operations by using encryption context. The encryption context is one or more key-value pairs of additional data that you want associated with AWS KMS protected information.
Encryption context helps you defend against the risks of ciphertexts being tampered with, modified, or replaced — whether intentionally or unintentionally. Encryption context helps defend against both an unauthorized user replacing one ciphertext with another, as well as problems like operational events. To use encryption context, you specify associated key-value pairs on encrypt. You must provide the exact same key-value pairs in the encryption context on decrypt, or the operation will fail. Encryption context is not secret, and is not an access-control mechanism. The encryption context is a means of authenticating the data, not the caller.
The Direct KMS Materials Provider used in this blog post transparently generates a unique data key by using AWS KMS for each item stored in the DynamoDB table. It automatically sets the item’s partition key and sort key (if any) as AWS KMS encryption context key-value pairs.
The solution in this blog post relies on the partition key of each table item being defined in the encryption context. If you encrypt data with your own implementation, make sure to add your tenant ID to the encryption context in all your AWS KMS API calls.
Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes. In AWS, these attributes are called tags. In the solution in this post, ABAC helps you create tenant-isolated access policies for your application, without the need to provision tenant specific AWS IAM roles.
If you are a SaaS vendor expecting large numbers of tenants, it is important that your underlying architecture can cost effectively scale with minimal complexity to support the required number of tenants, without compromising on security. One way to meet these criteria is to store your tenant data in a single pooled DynamoDB table, and to encrypt the data using a single AWS KMS key.
Using a single shared KMS key to read and write encrypted data in DynamoDB for multiple tenants reduces your per-tenant costs. This may be especially relevant to manage your costs if you have users on your organization’s free tier, with no direct revenue to offset your costs.
When you use shared resources such as a single pooled DynamoDB table encrypted by using a single KMS key, you need a mechanism to help prevent cross-tenant access to the sensitive data. This is where you can use ABAC for AWS. By using ABAC, you can build an application with strong tenant isolation capabilities, while still using shared and pooled underlying resources for storing your sensitive tenant data.
You can find the solution described in this blog post in the aws-dynamodb-encrypt-with-abac GitHub repository. This solution uses ABAC combined with KMS encryption context to provide isolation of tenant data, both at rest and at run time. By using a single KMS key, the application encrypts tenant data on the client-side, and stores it in a pooled DynamoDB table, which is partitioned by a tenant ID.
Solution Architecture
Figure 1: Components of solution architecture
The presented solution implements an API with a single AWS Lambda function behind an Amazon API Gateway, and implements processing for two types of requests:
GET request: fetch any key-value pairs stored in the tenant data store for the given tenant ID.
POST request: store the provided key-value pairs in the tenant data store for the given tenant ID, overwriting any existing data for the same tenant ID.
It also uses the DynamoDB Encryption Client for Python, which includes several helper classes that mirror the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3) classes for DynamoDB. This solution uses the EncryptedResource helper class which provides Boto3 compatible get_item and put_item methods. The helper class is used together with the KMS Materials Provider to handle encryption and decryption with AWS KMS transparently for the application.
Note: This example solution provides no authentication of the caller identity. See chapter “Considerations for authentication and authorization” for further guidance.
How it works
Figure 2: Detailed architecture for storing new or updated tenant data
As requests are made into the application’s API, they are routed by API Gateway to the application’s Lambda function (1). The Lambda function begins to run with the IAM permissions that its IAM execution role (DefaultExecutionRole) has been granted. These permissions do not grant any access to the DynamoDB table or the KMS key. In order to access these resources, the Lambda function first needs to assume the ResourceAccessRole, which does have the necessary permissions. To implement ABAC more securely in this use case, it is important that the application maintains clear separation of IAM permissions between the assumed ResourceAccessRole and the DefaultExecutionRole.
As the application assumes the ResourceAccessRole using the AssumeRole API call (2), it also sets a TenantID session tag. Session tags are key-value pairs that can be passed when you assume an IAM role in AWS Simple Token Service (AWS STS), and are a fundamental core building block of ABAC on AWS. When the session credentials (3) are used to make a subsequent request, the request context includes the aws:PrincipalTag context key, which can be used to access the session’s tags. The chapter “The ResourceAccessRole policy” describes how the aws:PrincipalTag context key is used in IAM policy condition statements to implement ABAC for this solution. Note that for demonstration purposes, this solution receives the value for the TenantID tag directly from the request URL, and it is not authenticated.
The trust policy of the ResourceAccessRole defines the principals that are allowed to assume the role, and to tag the assumed role session. Make sure to limit the principals to the least needed for your application to function. In this solution, the application Lambda function is the only trusted principal defined in the trust policy.
Next, the Lambda function prepares to encrypt or decrypt the data (4). To do so, it uses the DynamoDB Encryption Client. The KMS Materials Provider and the EncryptedResource helper class are both initialized with sessions by using the temporary credentials from the AssumeRole API call. This allows the Lambda function to access the KMS key and DynamoDB table resources, with access restricted to operations on data belonging only to the specific tenant ID.
Finally, using the EncryptedResource helper class provided by the DynamoDB Encryption Library, the data is written to and read from the DynamoDB table (5).
Considerations for authentication and authorization
The solution in this blog post intentionally does not implement authentication or authorization of the client requests. Instead, the requested tenant ID from the request URL is passed as the tenant identity. Your own applications should always authenticate and authorize tenant requests. There are multiple ways you can achieve this.
Modern web applications commonly use OpenID Connect (OIDC) for authentication, and OAuth for authorization. JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) can be used to pass the resulting authorization data from client to the application. You can validate a JWT when using AWS API Gateway with one of the following methods:
Regardless of the chosen method, you must be able to map a suitable claim from the user’s JWT, such as the subject, to the tenant ID, so that it can be used as the session tag in this solution.
The ResourceAccessRole policy
A critical part of the correct operation of ABAC in this solution is with the definition of the IAM access policy for the ResourceAccessRole. In the following policy, be sure to replace <region>, <account-id>, <table-name>, and <key-id> with your own values.
The policy defines two access statements, both of which apply separate ABAC conditions:
The first statement grants access to the DynamoDB table with the condition that the partition key of the item matches the TenantID session tag in the caller’s session.
The second statement grants access to the KMS key with the condition that one of the key-value pairs in the encryption context of the API call has a key called tenant_id with a value that matches the TenantID session tag in the caller’s session.
Warning: Do not use a ForAnyValue or ForAllValues set operator with the kms:EncryptionContext single-valued condition key. These set operators can create a policy condition that does not require values you intend to require, and allows values you intend to forbid.
Deploying and testing the solution
Prerequisites
To deploy and test the solution, you need the following:
After you have the prerequisites installed, run the following steps in a command line environment to deploy the solution. Make sure that your AWS CLI is configured with your AWS account credentials. Note that standard AWS service charges apply to this solution. For more information about pricing, see the AWS Pricing page.
To deploy the solution into your AWS account
Use the following command to download the source code:
git clone https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-dynamodb-encrypt-with-abac
cd aws-dynamodb-encrypt-with-abac
(Optional) You will need an AWS CDK version compatible with the application (2.37.0) to deploy. The simplest way is to install a local copy with npm, but you can also use a globally installed version if you already have one. To install locally, use the following command to use npm to install the AWS CDK:
With the application deployed, you can test the solution by making API calls against the API URL that you captured from the deployment output. You can start with a simple HTTP POST request to insert data for a tenant. The API expects a JSON string as the data to store, so make sure to post properly formatted JSON in the body of the request.
An example request using curl -command looks like:
curl https://<api url>/prod/tenant/<tenant-name> -X POST --data '{"email":"<[email protected]>"}'
You can then read the same data back with an HTTP GET request:
curl https://<api url>/prod/tenant/<tenant-name>
You can store and retrieve data for any number of tenants, and can store as many attributes as you like. Each time you store data for a tenant, any previously stored data is overwritten.
Additional considerations
A tenant ID is used as the DynamoDB table’s partition key in the example application in this solution. You can replace the tenant ID with another unique partition key, such as a product ID, as long as the ID is consistently used in the IAM access policy, the IAM session tag, and the KMS encryption context. In addition, while this solution does not use a sort key in the table, you can modify the application to support a sort key with only a few changes. For more information, see Working with tables and data in DynamoDB.
Clean up
To clean up the application resources that you deployed while testing the solution, in the solution’s home directory, run the command cdk destroy.
In this post, you learned a method for simple and cost-efficient client-side encryption for your tenant data. By using the DynamoDB Encryption Client, you were able to implement the encryption with less effort, all while using a standard Boto3 DynamoDB Table resource compatible interface.
Adding to the client-side encryption, you also learned how to apply attribute-based access control (ABAC) to your IAM access policies. You used ABAC for tenant isolation by applying conditions for both the DynamoDB table access, as well as access to the KMS key that is used for encryption of the tenant data in the DynamoDB table. By combining client-side encryption with ABAC, you have increased your data protection with multiple layers of security.
You can start experimenting today on your own by using the provided solution. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions on the content, consider submitting them to AWS re:Post
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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.
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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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
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.
As described in an earlier blog post, Establishing a data perimeter on AWS, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a set of capabilities you can use to implement a data perimeter to help prevent unintended access. One type of unintended access that companies want to prevent is access to corporate data by users who do not belong to the company. A combination of AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) features and capabilities that can help you achieve this goal in AWS while fostering innovation and agility form the identity perimeter. In this blog post, I will provide an overview of some of the security risks the identity perimeter is designed to address, policy examples, and implementation guidance for establishing the perimeter.
The identity perimeter is a set of coarse-grained preventative controls that help achieve the following objectives:
Only trusted identities can access my resources
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network
Trusted identities encompass IAM principals that belong to your company, which is typically represented by an AWS Organizations organization. In AWS, an IAM principal is a person or application that can make a request for an action or operation on an AWS resource. There are also scenarios when AWS services perform actions on your behalf using identities that do not belong to your organization. You should consider both types of data access patterns when you create a definition of trusted identities that is specific to your company and your use of AWS services. All other identities are considered untrusted and should have no access except by explicit exception.
Security risks addressed by the identity perimeter
The identity perimeter helps address several security risks, including the following.
Unintended data disclosure due to misconfiguration. Some AWS services support resource-based IAM policies that you can use to grant principals (including principals outside of your organization) permissions to perform actions on the resources they are attached to. While this allows developers to configure resource-based policies based on their application requirements, you should ensure that access to untrusted identities is prohibited even if the developers grant broad access to your resources, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets. Figure 1 illustrates examples of access patterns you would want to prevent—specifically, principals outside of your organization accessing your S3 bucket from a non-corporate AWS account, your on-premises network, or the internet.
Figure 1: Unintended access to your S3 bucket by identities outside of your organization
Unintended data disclosure through non-corporate credentials. Some AWS services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and AWS Lambda, let you run code using the IAM credentials of your choosing. Similar to on-premises environments where developers might have access to physical and virtual servers, there is a risk that the developers can bring personal IAM credentials to a corporate network and attempt to move company data to personal AWS resources. For example, Figure 2 illustrates unintended access patterns where identities outside of your AWS Organizations organization are used to transfer data from your on-premises networks or VPC to an S3 bucket in a non-corporate AWS account.
Figure 2: Unintended access from your networks by identities outside of your organization
Implementing the identity perimeter
Before you can implement the identity perimeter by using preventative controls, you need to have a way to evaluate whether a principal is trusted and do this evaluation effectively in a multi-account AWS environment. IAM policies allow you to control access based on whether the IAM principal belongs to a particular account or an organization, with the following IAM condition keys:
The aws:PrincipalOrgID condition key gives you a succinct way to refer to all IAM principals that belong to a particular organization. There are similar condition keys, such as aws:PrincipalOrgPaths and aws:PrincipalAccount, that allow you to define different granularities of trust.
The aws:PrincipalIsAWSService condition key gives you a way to refer to AWS service principals when those are used to access resources on your behalf. For example, when you create a flow log with an S3 bucket as the destination, VPC Flow Logs uses a service principal, delivery.logs.amazonaws.com, which does not belong to your organization, to publish logs to Amazon S3.
In the context of the identity perimeter, there are two types of IAM policies that can help you ensure that the call to an AWS resource is made by a trusted identity:
Using the IAM condition keys and the policy types just listed, you can now implement the identity perimeter. The following table illustrates the relationship between identity perimeter objectives and the AWS capabilities that you can use to achieve them.
Data perimeter
Control objective
Implemented by using
Primary IAM capability
Identity
Only trusted identities can access my resources.
Resource-based policies
aws:PrincipalOrgID aws:PrincipalIsAWSService
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network.
VPC endpoint policies
Let’s see how you can use these capabilities to mitigate the risk of unintended access to your data.
Only trusted identities can access my resources
Resource-based policies allow you to specify who has access to the resource and what actions they can perform. Resource-based policies also allow you to apply identity perimeter controls to mitigate the risk of unintended data disclosure due to misconfiguration. The following is an example of a resource-based policy for an S3 bucket that limits access to only trusted identities. Make sure to replace <DOC-EXAMPLE-MY-BUCKET> and <MY-ORG-ID> with your information.
The Deny statement in the preceding policy has two condition keys where both conditions must resolve to true to invoke the Deny effect. This means that this policy will deny any S3 action unless it is performed by an IAM principal within your organization (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:PrincipalOrgID) or a service principal (BoolIfExists with aws:PrincipalIsAWSService). Note that resource-based policies on AWS resources do not allow access outside of the account by default. Therefore, in order for another account or an AWS service to be able to access your resource directly, you need to explicitly grant access permissions with appropriate Allow statements added to the preceding policy.
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network
When you access AWS services from on-premises networks or VPCs, you can use public service endpoints or connect to supported AWS services by using VPC endpoints. VPC endpoints allow you to apply identity perimeter controls to mitigate the risk of unintended data disclosure through non-corporate credentials. The following is an example of a VPC endpoint policy that allows access to all actions but limits the access to trusted identities only. Replace <MY-ORG-ID> with your information.
As opposed to the resource-based policy example, the preceding policy uses Allow statements to enforce the identity perimeter. This is because VPC endpoint policies do not grant any permissions but define the maximum access allowed through the endpoint. Your developers will be using identity-based or resource-based policies to grant permissions required by their applications. We use two statements in this example policy to invoke the Allow effect in two scenarios: if an action is performed by an IAM principal that belongs to your organization (StringEquals with aws:PrincipalOrgID in the AllowRequestsByOrgsIdentities statement) or if an action is performed by a service principal (Bool with aws:PrincipalIsAWSService in the AllowRequestsByAWSServicePrincipals statement). We do not use IfExists in the end of the condition operators in this case, because we want the condition elements to evaluate to true only if the specified keys exist in the request.
There might be circumstances when you want to grant access to your resources to principals outside of your organization. For example, you might be hosting a dataset in an Amazon S3 bucket that is being accessed by your business partners from their own AWS accounts. In order to support this access pattern, you can use the aws:PrincipalAccount condition key to include third-party account identities as trusted identities in a policy. This is shown in the following resource-based policy example. Replace <DOC-EXAMPLE-MY-BUCKET>, <MY-ORG-ID>, <THIRD-PARTY-ACCOUNT-A>, and <THIRD-PARTY-ACCOUNT-B> with your information.
The preceding policy adds the aws:PrincipalAccount condition key to the StringNotEqualsIfExists operator. You now have a Deny statement with three condition keys where all three conditions must resolve to true to invoke the Deny effect. Therefore, this policy denies any S3 action unless it is performed by an IAM principal that belongs to your organization (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:PrincipalOrgID), by an IAM principal that belongs to specified third-party accounts (StringNotEqualsIfExists with aws:PrincipalAccount), or a service principal (BoolIfExists with aws:PrincipalIsAWSService).
There might also be circumstances when you want to grant access from your networks to identities external to your organization. For example, your applications could be uploading or downloading objects to or from a third-party S3 bucket by using third-party generated pre-signed Amazon S3 URLs. The principal that generates the pre-signed URL will belong to the third-party AWS account. Similar to the previously discussed S3 bucket policy, you can extend your identity perimeter to include identities that belong to trusted third-party accounts by using the aws:PrincipalAccount condition key in your VPC endpoint policy.
Additionally, some AWS services make unauthenticated requests to AWS owned resources through your VPC endpoint. An example of such a pattern is Kernel Live Patching on Amazon Linux 2, which allows you to apply security vulnerability and critical bug patches to a running Linux kernel. Amazon EC2 makes an unauthenticated call to Amazon S3 to download packages from Amazon Linux repositories hosted on Amazon EC2 service-owned S3 buckets. To include this access pattern into your identity perimeter definition, you can choose to allow unauthenticated API calls to AWS owned resources in the VPC endpoint policies.
The following example VPC endpoint policy demonstrates how to extend your identity perimeter to include access to Amazon Linux repositories and to Amazon S3 buckets owned by a third-party. Replace <MY-ORG-ID>, <REGION>, <ACTION>, <THIRD-PARTY-ACCOUNT-A>, and <THIRD-PARTY-BUCKET-ARN> with your information.
The preceding example adds two new statements to the VPC endpoint policy. The AllowUnauthenticatedRequestsToAWSResources statement allows the s3:GetObject action on buckets that host Amazon Linux repositories. The AllowRequestsByThirdPartyIdentitiesToThirdPartyResources statement allows actions on resources owned by a third-party entity by principals that belong to the third-party account (StringEquals with aws:PrincipalAccount).
Note that identity perimeter controls do not eliminate the need for additional network protections, such as making sure that your private EC2 instances or databases are not inadvertently exposed to the internet due to overly permissive security groups.
Apart from preventative controls established by the identity perimeter, we also recommend that you configure AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer. IAM Access Analyzer helps you identify unintended access to your resources and data by monitoring policies applied to supported resources. You can review IAM Access Analyzer findings to identify resources that are shared with principals that do not belong to your AWS Organizations organization. You should also consider enabling Amazon GuardDuty to detect misconfigurations or anomalous access to your resources that could lead to unintended disclosure of your data. GuardDuty uses threat intelligence, machine learning, and anomaly detection to analyze data from various sources in your AWS accounts. You can review GuardDuty findings to identify unexpected or potentially malicious activity in your AWS environment, such as an IAM principal with no previous history invoking an S3 API.
IAM policy samples
This AWS git repository contains policy examples that illustrate how to implement identity perimeter controls for a variety of AWS services and actions. The policy samples do not represent a complete list of valid data access patterns and are for reference purposes only. They are intended for you to tailor and extend to suit the needs of your environment. Make sure that you thoroughly test the provided example policies before you implement them in your production environment.
Deploying the identity perimeter at scale
As discussed earlier, you implement the identity perimeter as coarse-grained preventative controls. These controls typically need to be implemented for each VPC by using VPC endpoint policies and on all resources that support resource-based policies. The effectiveness of these controls relies on their ability to scale with the environment and to adapt to its dynamic nature.
The methodology you use to deploy identity perimeter controls will depend on the deployment mechanisms you use to create and manage AWS accounts. For example, you might choose to use AWS Control Tower and the Customizations for AWS Control Tower solution (CfCT) to govern your AWS environment at scale. You can use CfCT or your custom CI/CD pipeline to deploy VPC endpoints and VPC endpoint policies that include your identity perimeter controls.
Because developers will be creating resources such as S3 buckets and AWS KMS keys on a regular basis, you might need to implement automation to enforce identity perimeter controls when those resources are created or their policies are changed. One option is to use custom AWS Config rules. Alternatively, you can choose to enforce resource deployment through AWS Service Catalog or a CI/CD pipeline. With the AWS Service Catalog approach, you can have identity perimeter controls built into the centrally controlled products that are made available to developers to deploy within their accounts. With the CI/CD pipeline approach, the pipeline can have built-in compliance checks that enforce identity perimeter controls during the deployment. If you are deploying resources with your CI/CD pipeline by using AWS CloudFormation, see the blog post Proactively keep resources secure and compliant with AWS CloudFormation Hooks.
Regardless of the deployment tools you select, identity perimeter controls, along with other baseline security controls applicable to your multi-account environment, should be included in your account provisioning process. You should also audit your identity perimeter configurations periodically and upon changes in your organization, which could lead to modifications in your identity perimeter controls (for example, disabling a third-party integration). Keeping your identity perimeter controls up to date will help ensure that they are consistently enforced and help prevent unintended access during the entire account lifecycle.
Conclusion
In this blog post, you learned about the foundational elements that are needed to define and implement the identity perimeter, including sample policies that you can use to start defining guardrails that are applicable to your environment and control objectives.
Following are additional resources that will help you further explore the identity perimeter topic, including a whitepaper and a hands-on-workshop.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, contact AWS Support or browse AWS re:Post. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.
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I have been meaning to write about Joe Sullivan, Uber’s former Chief Security Officer. He wasconvicted of crimes related to covering up a cyberattack against Uber. It’s a complicated case, and I’m not convinced that he deserved a guilty ruling or that it’s a good thing for the industry.
I may still write something, but until then, this essay on the topic is worth reading.
When using major web browsers like Chrome and Edge, your form data is transmitted to Google and Microsoft, respectively, should enhanced spellcheck features be enabled.
Depending on the website you visit, the form data may itself include PII—including but not limited to Social Security Numbers (SSNs)/Social Insurance Numbers (SINs), name, address, email, date of birth (DOB), contact information, bank and payment information, and so on.
The solution is to only use the spellchecker options that keep the data on your computer—and don’t send it into the cloud.
AWS is excited to announce the launch of the AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin, which makes it easier for ATAK users to maintain secure communications.
The Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK)—also known as Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) for military use—is a smartphone geospatial infrastructure and situational awareness application. It provides mapping, messaging, and geofencing capabilities to enable safe collaboration over geography.
ATAK users, referred to as operators, can view the location of other operators and potential hazards—a major advantage over relying on hand-held radio transmissions. While ATAK was initially designed for use in combat zones, the technology has been adapted to fit the missions of local, state, and federal agencies.
ATAK is currently in use by over 40,000 US Department of Defense (DoD) users—including the Air Force, Army, Special Operations, and National Guard—along with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 32,000 nonfederal users.
Using AWS Wickr with ATAK
AWS Wickr is a secure collaboration service that provides enterprises and government agencies with advanced security and administrative controls to help them meet security and compliance requirements. The AWS Wickr service is now in preview.
With AWS Wickr, communication mechanisms such as one-to-one and group messaging, audio and video calling, screen sharing, and file sharing are protected with 256-bit end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Encryption takes place locally, on the endpoint. Every message, call, and file is encrypted with a new random key, and no one but the intended recipients can decrypt them. Flexible administrative features enable organizations to deploy at scale, and facilitate information governance.
AWS Wickr supports many agencies that use ATAK. However, until now, ATAK operators have had to leave the ATAK application in order to use AWS Wickr, which creates operational risk.
AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin
AWS Wickr has developed a plugin that enhances ATAK with secure communications features. ATAK operators are provided with a Wickr Enterprise or Wickr Pro account, so they can use AWS Wickr within ATAK for secure messaging, calling, and file transfer. This helps reduce interruptions, and the complexity of configuration with ATAK chat features.
Use cases
The AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin has multiple use cases.
Military
The military uses ATAK for blue force tracking to locate team members, red force tracking to locate enemies, terrain and weather analysis, and to visually communicate their movements to friendly forces.
The AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin enhances the ability of military personnel to maintain the situational awareness ATAK provides, while quickly receiving and reacting to Wickr communications. Ephemeral messaging options allow unit leaders to send mission plans, GPS points of interest, and set burn-on-read and expiration timers. Information can be deleted from the device, while being retained on the AWS Wickr service to help meet compliance requirements, and facilitate the creation of after-action reports.
Law enforcement
ATAK is a powerful tool for team tracking and mission planning that promotes a safer and better response to critical law enforcement and public-safety events.
The AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin adds to the capabilities of ATAK by supporting secure communications between tactical, negotiation, and investigative teams.
First responders
ATAK aids in search-and-rescue and multi-jurisdictional natural disaster responses, such as hurricane relief efforts.
The AWS Wickr ATAK Plugin provides secure, uninterrupted communication between all levels of first responders to help them get oriented quickly, and support complex coordination needs.
According to an article in MIT Sloan Management Review, 9 out of 10 companies believe their industry will be digitally disrupted. In order to fuel the digital disruption, companies are eager to gather as much data as possible. Given the importance of this new asset, lawmakers are keen to protect the privacy of individuals and prevent any misuse. Organizations often face challenges as they aim to comply with data privacy regulations like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These regulations demand strict access controls to protect sensitive personal data.
This is a two-part post. In part 1, we walk through a solution that uses a microservice-based approach to enable fast and cost-effective pseudonymization of attributes in datasets. The solution uses the AES-GCM-SIV algorithm to pseudonymize sensitive data. In part 2, we will walk through useful patterns for dealing with data protection for varying degrees of data volume, velocity, and variety using Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, and Amazon Athena.
Data privacy and data protection basics
Before diving into the solution architecture, let’s look at some of the basics of data privacy and data protection. Data privacy refers to the handling of personal information and how data should be handled based on its relative importance, consent, data collection, and regulatory compliance. Depending on your regional privacy laws, the terminology and definition in scope of personal information may differ. For example, privacy laws in the United States use personally identifiable information (PII) in their terminology, whereas GDPR in the European Union refers to it as personal data. Techgdpr explains in detail the difference between the two. Through the rest of the post, we use PII and personal data interchangeably.
Data anonymization and pseudonymization can potentially be used to implement data privacy to protect both PII and personal data and still allow organizations to legitimately use the data.
Anonymization vs. pseudonymization
Anonymization refers to a technique of data processing that aims to irreversibly remove PII from a dataset. The dataset is considered anonymized if it can’t be used to directly or indirectly identify an individual.
Pseudonymization is a data sanitization procedure by which PII fields within a data record are replaced by artificial identifiers. A single pseudonym for each replaced field or collection of replaced fields makes the data record less identifiable while remaining suitable for data analysis and data processing. This technique is especially useful because it protects your PII data at record level for analytical purposes such as business intelligence, big data, or machine learning use cases.
The main difference between anonymization and pseudonymization is that the pseudonymized data is reversible (re-identifiable) to authorized users and is still considered personal data.
Solution overview
The following architecture diagram provides an overview of the solution.
This architecture contains two separate accounts:
Central pseudonymization service: Account 111111111111 – The pseudonymization service is running in its own dedicated AWS account (right). This is a centrally managed pseudonymization API that provides access to two resources for pseudonymization and reidentification. With this architecture, you can apply authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and other API management tasks in one place. For this solution, we’re using API keys to authenticate and authorize consumers.
Compute: Account 222222222222 – The account on the left is referred to as the compute account, where the extract, transform, and load (ETL) workloads are running. This account depicts a consumer of the pseudonymization microservice. The account hosts the various consumer patterns depicted in the architecture diagram. These solutions are covered in detail in part 2 of this series.
The pseudonymization service is built using AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. Lambda enables the serverless microservice features, and API Gateway provides serverless APIs for HTTP or RESTful and WebSocket communication.
We create the solution resources via AWS CloudFormation. The CloudFormation stack template and the source code for the Lambda function are available in GitHub Repository.
We walk you through the following steps:
Deploy the solution resources with AWS CloudFormation.
Pseudonymization logic is written in Java and uses the AES-GCM-SIV algorithm developed by codahale. The source code is hosted in a Lambda function. Secret keys are stored securely in Secrets Manager. AWS Key Management System (AWS KMS) makes sure that secrets and sensitive components are protected at rest. The service is exposed to consumers via API Gateway as a REST API. Consumers are authenticated and authorized to consume the API via API keys. The pseudonymization service is technology agnostic and can be adopted by any form of consumer as long as they’re able to consume REST APIs.
As depicted in the following figure, the API consists of two resources with the POST method:
Pseudonymization – The pseudonymization resource can be used by authorized users to pseudonymize a given list of plaintexts (identifiers) and replace them with a pseudonym.
Reidentification – The reidentification resource can be used by authorized users to convert pseudonyms to plaintexts (identifiers).
The request response model of the API utilizes Java string arrays to store multiple values in a single variable, as depicted in the following code.
The API supports a Boolean type query parameter to decide whether encryption is deterministic or probabilistic.
The implementation of the algorithm has been modified to add the logic to generate a nonce, which is dependent on the plaintext being pseudonymized. If the incoming query parameters key deterministic has the value True, then the overloaded version of the encrypt function is called. This generates a nonce using the HmacSHA256 function on the plaintext, and takes 12 sub-bytes from a predetermined position for nonce. This nonce is then used for the encryption and prepended to the resulting ciphertext. The following is an example:
This approach is useful especially for building analytical systems that may require PII fields to be used for joining datasets with other pseudonymized datasets.
The following code shows an example of deterministic encryption.
If the incoming query parameters key deterministic has the value False, then the encrypt method is called without the deterministic parameter and the nonce generated is a random 12 bytes. This generates a different ciphertext for the same incoming plaintext.
The following code shows an example of probabilistic encryption.
The Lambda function utilizes a couple of caching mechanisms to boost the performance of the function. It uses Guava to build a cache to avoid generation of the pseudonym or identifier if it’s already available in the cache. For the probabilistic approach, the cache isn’t utilized. It also uses SecretCache, an in-memory cache for secrets requested from Secrets Manager.
Prerequisites
For this walkthrough, you should have the following prerequisites:
ARTEFACT_S3_BUCKET – The S3 bucket where the infrastructure code is stored. The bucket must be created in the same account and Region where the solution lives.
Use the following commands to run the ./deployments_scripts/deploy.sh script:
Upon successful deployment, the script displays the stack outputs, as depicted in the following screenshot. Take note of the output, because we use it in subsequent steps.
Generate encryption keys and persist them in Secrets Manager
In this step, we generate the encryption keys required to pseudonymize the plain text data. We generate those keys by calling the KMS key we created in the previous step. Then we persist the keys in a secret. Encryption keys are encrypted at rest and in transit, and exist in plain text only in-memory when the function calls them.
To perform this step, we use the script key_generator.py. You need to pass the following parameters for the script to run successfully:
KmsKeyArn – The output value from the previous stack deployment
AWS_PROFILE – The named profile that applies to the AWS CLI command
AWS_REGION – The Region where the solution is deployed
SecretName – The output value from the previous stack deployment
Use the following command to run ./helper_scripts/key_generator.py:
Upon successful deployment, the secret value should look like the following screenshot.
Test the solution
In this step, we configure Postman and query the REST API, so you need to make sure Postman is installed in your machine. Upon successful authentication, the API returns the requested values.
The following parameters are required to create a complete request in Postman:
PseudonymizationUrl – The output value from stack deployment
ReidentificationUrl – The output value from stack deployment
deterministic – The value True or False for the pseudonymization call
API_Key – The API key, which you can retrieve from API Gateway console
From the collection folder, navigate to the pseudonymization request.
To test the pseudonymization resource, replace all variables in the sample request with the parameters mentioned earlier.
The request template in the body already has some dummy values provided. You can use the existing one or exchange with your own.
Choose Send to run the request.
The API returns in the body of the response a JSON data type.
From the collection folder, navigate to the reidentification request.
To test the reidentification resource, replace all variables in the sample request with the parameters mentioned earlier.
Pass to the response template in the body the pseudonyms output from earlier.
Choose Send to run the request.
The API returns in the body of the response a JSON data type.
Cost and performance
There are many factors that can determine the cost and performance of the service. Performance especially can be influenced by payload size, concurrency, cache hit, and managed service limits on the account level. The cost is mainly influenced by how much the service is being used. For our cost and performance exercise, we consider the following scenario:
The REST API is used to pseudonymize Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs). On average, consumers request pseudonymization of 1,000 VINs per call. The service processes on average 40 requests per second, or 40,000 encryption or decryption operations per second. The average process time per request is as follows:
15 milliseconds for deterministic encryption
23 milliseconds for probabilistic encryption
6 milliseconds for decryption
The number of calls hitting the service per month is distributed as follows:
50 million calls hitting the pseudonymization resource for deterministic encryption
25 million calls hitting the pseudonymization resource for probabilistic encryption
25 million calls hitting the reidentification resource for decryption
Based on this scenario, the average cost is $415.42 USD per month. You may find the detailed cost breakdown in the estimate generated via the AWS Pricing Calculator.
We use Locust to simulate a similar load to our scenario. Measurements from Amazon CloudWatch metrics are depicted in the following screenshots (network latency isn’t considered during our measurement).
The following screenshot shows API Gateway latency and Lambda duration for deterministic encryption. Latency is high at the beginning due to the cold start, and flattens out over time.
The following screenshot shows metrics for probabilistic encryption.
The following shows metrics for decryption.
Clean up
To avoid incurring future charges, delete the CloudFormation stack by running the destroy.sh script. The following parameters are required to run the script successfully:
STACK_NAME – The CloudFormation stack name
AWS_REGION – The Region where the solution is deployed
AWS_PROFILE – The named profile that applies to the AWS CLI command
Use the following commands to run the ./deployment_scripts/destroy.sh script:
In this post, we demonstrated how to build a pseudonymization service on AWS. The solution is technology agnostic and can be adopted by any form of consumer as long as they’re able to consume REST APIs. We hope this post helps you in your data protection strategies.
Stay tuned for part 2, which will cover consumption patterns of the pseudonymization service.
About the authors
Edvin Hallvaxhiu is a Senior Global Security Architect with AWS Professional Services and is passionate about cybersecurity and automation. He helps customers build secure and compliant solutions in the cloud. Outside work, he likes traveling and sports.
Rahul Shaurya is a Senior Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He helps and works closely with customers building data platforms and analytical applications on AWS. Outside of work, Rahul loves taking long walks with his dog Barney.
Andrea Montanari is a Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He actively supports customers and partners in building analytics solutions at scale on AWS.
MaríaGuerra is a Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. Maria has a background in data analytics and mechanical engineering. She helps customers architecting and developing data related workloads in the cloud.
Pushpraj is a Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He is passionate about Data and DevOps engineering. He helps customers build data driven applications at scale.
The collective thoughts of the interwebz
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Edvin Hallvaxhiu is a Senior Global Security Architect with AWS Professional Services and is passionate about cybersecurity and automation. He helps customers build secure and compliant solutions in the cloud. Outside work, he likes traveling and sports.
Rahul Shaurya is a Senior Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He helps and works closely with customers building data platforms and analytical applications on AWS. Outside of work, Rahul loves taking long walks with his dog Barney.
Andrea Montanari is a Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He actively supports customers and partners in building analytics solutions at scale on AWS.
María Guerra is a Big Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. Maria has a background in data analytics and mechanical engineering. She helps customers architecting and developing data related workloads in the cloud.
Pushpraj is a Data Architect with AWS Professional Services. He is passionate about Data and DevOps engineering. He helps customers build data driven applications at scale.