Amazon S3 Batch Operations adds support for S3 Object Lock

Posted on: May 4, 2020

You can now perform S3 Object Lock operations using Amazon S3 Batch Operations to apply or change legal holds or retention periods across many objects with a single API request or a few clicks in the S3 Management Console. S3 Batch Operations lets you perform repetitive or bulk actions like copying or updating tag sets across billions of objects. S3 Batch Operations handles all the manual work, including managing retries and displaying progress.  

S3 Object Lock protects objects from being overwritten or deleted, ensuring that objects remain immutable for as long as S3 Object Lock protection is applied. You can apply S3 Object Lock protection by either assigning a Retain Until Date or a Legal Hold to an object. For example, customers can apply policies to set a lock on log files that have an expected minimum retention to prevent accidental deletions. Now with S3 Object Lock support for S3 Batch Operations, you can apply this to billions of existing objects. For more information on how to use S3 Object Lock, see Amazon S3 Object Lock overview

You provide a list of objects, select a retention period or legal hold status, and S3 Batch Operations will apply the selected policy to the list of objects provided. For instance, you could extend the retention period by one year for millions of objects for which a hold is about to expire. You can do this by running an S3 Inventory report, selecting that inventory as a manifest, specifying a new retention date and initiating a S3 Batch Operations job. Additionally, you can now apply S3 Object Lock settings to objects copied using Batch Operations, ensuring the objects have the correct settings applied when they are created.

S3 Batch Operations support for S3 Object Lock includes all the same functionality as the S3 Object Lock API. To learn more about how to use S3 Object Lock for S3 Batch Operations jobs, see the API reference guide.

S3 Object Lock has been assessed for SEC Rule 17a-4(f), FINRA Rule 4511, and CFTC Regulation 1.31 by Cohasset Associates. Cohasset Associates is a management consulting firm specializing in records management and information governance. You can download a copy of the Cohasset Associates Assessment report here. You can then provide the assessment report to your regulator when you notify them of your decision to use Amazon S3 for your regulated data.

S3 Batch Operations and support for S3 Object Lock is available in all AWS commercial regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. S3 Batch Operations supports other actions in addition to object lock: object copy, object tagging, applying ACLs to objects, Glacier restore, and AWS Lambda functions. To learn more about S3 Batch Operations visit the feature pageread the blog, watch the video tutorials, visit the documentation, and see our FAQs