Category: How-To

Today, the AWS Crypto Tools team introduced a new feature in the AWS Encryption SDK: data key caching. Data key caching lets you reuse the data keys that protect your data, instead of generating a new data key for each encryption operation. Data key caching can reduce latency, improve throughput, reduce cost, and help you […]

As part of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, you are responsible for monitoring and managing your resources at the operating system and application level. When you monitor your application servers, for example, you can measure, visualize, react to, and improve the security of those servers. You probably already do this on premises or in other […]

AWS Organizations offers new capabilities for managing AWS accounts, including automated account creation via the Organizations API. For example, you can bring new development teams onboard by using the Organizations API to create an account, AWS CloudFormation templates to configure the account (such as for AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM] and networking), and service control […]

In Amazon Cloud Directory, it’s often necessary to add new objects or add relationships between new objects and existing objects to reflect changes in a real-world hierarchy. With Cloud Directory, you can make these changes efficiently by using batch references within batch operations. Let’s say I want to take an existing child object in a […]

With AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (Enterprise Edition), also known as AWS Microsoft AD, you can now create and enforce custom password policies for your Microsoft Windows users. AWS Microsoft AD now includes five empty password policies that you can edit and apply with standard Microsoft password policy tools such as Active Directory […]

You can now increase the redundancy and performance of your AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (Enterprise Edition), also known as AWS Microsoft AD, directory by deploying additional domain controllers. Adding domain controllers increases redundancy, resulting in even greater resilience and higher availability. This new capability enables you to have at least two domain […]

I am an AWS Professional Services consultant, which has me working directly with AWS customers on a daily basis. One of my customers recently asked me to provide a solution to help them fulfill their security requirements by having the flow log data from VPC Flow Logs sent to a central AWS account. This is […]

September 16, 2019: We’ve updated this post to reflect current AWS service names. Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) from Microsoft simplifies password management by allowing organizations to use Active Directory (AD) to store unique passwords for computers. Typically, an organization might reuse the same local administrator password across the computers in an AD domain. However, […]

Securing data in transit is critical to the integrity of transactions on the Internet. Whether you log in to an account with your user name and password or give your credit card details to a retailer, you want your data protected as it travels across the Internet from place to place. One of the protocols […]

Note from September 18, 2017: In this blog post, “AWS CloudHSM” refers to the product that’s now known as AWS CloudHSM Classic. As I explained in my previous Security Blog post, a hardware security module (HSM) is a hardware device designed with the security of your data and cryptographic key material in mind. It is […]