AWS Security Blog
Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance
How to access secrets across AWS accounts by attaching resource-based policies
October 29, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. You can use AWS Secrets Manager to rotate, manage, and retrieve secrets such as database […]
Updated data classification whitepaper, includes guidance on establishing data classification programs
Note from March 25, 2020: This post was originally published on June 20, 2018, along with the Secure Cloud Adoption: Data Classification whitepaper, which has now been refreshed with newer information. We’ve updated our post accordingly. We’re sharing an update to the Secure Cloud Adoption: Data Classification whitepaper to help customers address data classification. Data […]
How AWS uses automated reasoning to help you achieve security at scale
January 31, 2025: We’ve updated this post to refer to IAM Access Analyzer for S3 instead of the S3 “public / not public” badges. At AWS, we focus on achieving security at scale to help reduce risks to your business. Fundamental to this approach is making sure that your policies are configured in a way […]
AWS GDPR Data Processing Addendum – Now Part of Service Terms
Today, we’re happy to announce that the AWS GDPR Data Processing Addendum(.pdf) is now part of our online Service Terms. This means all AWS customers globally can rely on the terms of the AWS GDPR DPA which will apply automatically from May 25, 2018, whenever they use AWS services to process personal data under the GDPR. The AWS […]
An easier way to control access to AWS resources by using the AWS organization of IAM principals
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) now makes it easier for you to control access to your AWS resources by using the AWS organization of IAM principals (users and roles). For some services, you grant permissions using resource-based policies to specify the accounts and principals that can access the resource and what actions they can […]
The AWS Shared Responsibility Model and GDPR
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) describes data processor and data controller roles, and some customers and AWS Partner Network (APN) partners are asking how this affects the long-established AWS Shared Responsibility Model. I wanted to take some time to help folks understand shared responsibilities for us and for our customers in context of […]
How to centralize DNS management in a multi-account environment
Note from June 5, 2019: The approach and architecture in this post is recommended if you prefer more control over DNS servers or prefer to use AWS Managed Active Directory for DNS resolution, however there are some limitations to this approach and we added a “Limitations and additional considerations” section to this post to describe […]
Easier way to control access to AWS regions using IAM policies
Update on February 20, 2019: We updated the policy example to remove the “iam:AttachRolePolicy” permission. We also added a reference to the permissions boundaries security blog post to show how to grant developers the permissions to create roles they can pass to AWS services. We made it easier for you to comply with regulatory standards […]
Understanding AWS CloudHSM Cluster Synchronization
Feb 17, 2025: This blog post references AWS CloudHSM Client SDK 3, which is no longer the recommended version. AWS recommends that you use the latest version, AWS CloudHSM Client SDK 5, which provides updated functionality and commands. We are currently working on an updated blog post for CloudHSM Client SDK 5. See the AWS […]
Preparing for AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Support of Certificate Transparency
Update from April 24, 2018: On April 24, 2018, we updated ACM to publish certificates to CT logs on issuance and on renewal, unless you disable Certificate Transparency logging. No action from you is required if you want ACM to publish your certificates to Certificate Transparency logs, which will avoid Google Chrome displaying error […]








