AWS Security Blog

How US federal agencies can use AWS to encrypt data at rest and in transit

This post is part of a series about how Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help your US federal agency meet the requirements of the President’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. You will learn how you can use AWS information security practices to meet the requirement to encrypt your data at rest and in transit, to the maximum extent possible.

Encrypt your data at rest in AWS

Data at rest represents any data that you persist in non-volatile storage for any duration in your workload. This includes block storage, object storage, databases, archives, IoT devices, and any other storage medium on which data is persisted. Protecting your data at rest reduces the risk of unauthorized access when encryption and appropriate access controls are implemented.

AWS KMS provides a streamlined way to manage keys used for at-rest encryption. It integrates with AWS services to simplify using your keys to encrypt data across your AWS workloads. It uses hardware security modules that have been validated under FIPS 140-2 to protect your keys. You choose the level of access control that you need, including the ability to share encrypted resources between accounts and services. AWS KMS logs key usage to AWS CloudTrail to provide an independent view of who accessed encrypted data, including AWS services that are using keys on your behalf. As of this writing, AWS KMS integrates with 81 different AWS services. Here are details on recommended encryption for workloads using some key services:

You can use AWS KMS to encrypt other data types including application data with client-side encryption. A client-side application or JavaScript encrypts data before uploading it to S3 or other storage resources. As a result, uploaded data is protected in transit and at rest. Customer options for client-side encryption include the AWS SDK for KMS, the AWS Encryption SDK, and use of third-party encryption tools.

You can also use AWS Secrets Manager to encrypt application passwords, connection strings, and other secrets. Database credentials, resource names, and other sensitive data used in AWS Lambda functions can be encrypted and accessed at run time. This increases the security of these secrets and allows for easier credential rotation.

KMS HSMs are validated to FIPS 140-2 Level 2 overall and accessible using FIPS validated endpoints. Agencies with additional requirements that require a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated hardware security module (HSM) (for example, for securing third-party secrets managers) can use AWS CloudHSM.

For more information about AWS KMS and key management best practices, visit these resources:

Encrypt your data in transit in AWS

In addition to encrypting data at rest, agencies must also encrypt data in transit. AWS provides a variety of solutions to help agencies encrypt data in transit and enforce this requirement.

First, all network traffic between AWS data centers is transparently encrypted at the physical layer. This data-link layer encryption includes traffic within an AWS Region as well as between Regions. Additionally, all traffic within a virtual private cloud (VPC) and between peered VPCs is transparently encrypted at the network layer when you are using supported Amazon EC2 instance types. Customers can choose to enable Transport Layer Security (TLS) for the applications they build on AWS using a variety of services. All AWS service endpoints support TLS to create a secure HTTPS connection to make API requests.

AWS offers several options for agency-managed infrastructure within the AWS Cloud that needs to terminate TLS. These options include load balancing services (for example, Elastic Load Balancing, Network Load Balancer, and Application Load Balancer), Amazon CloudFront (a content delivery network), and Amazon API Gateway. Each of these endpoint services enable customers to upload their digital certificates for the TLS connection. Digital certificates then need to be managed appropriately to account for expiration and rotation requirements. AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies generating, distributing, and rotating digital certificates. ACM offers publicly trusted certificates that can be used in AWS services that require certificates to terminate TLS connections to the internet. ACM also provides the ability to create a private certificate authority (CA) hierarchy that can integrate with existing on-premises CAs to automatically generate, distribute, and rotate certificates to secure internal communication among customer-managed infrastructure.

Finally, you can encrypt communications between your EC2 instances and other AWS resources that are connected to your VPC, such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases, Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file systems, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon ElasticCache for Redis, Amazon FSx Windows File Server, AWS Direct Connect (DX) MACsec, and more.

Conclusion

This post has reviewed services that are used to encrypt data at rest and in transit, following the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. I discussed the use of AWS KMS to manage encryption keys that handle the management of keys for at-rest encryption, as well as the use of ACM to manage certificates that protect data in transit.

Next steps

To learn more about how AWS can help you meet the requirements of the executive order, see the other posts in this series:

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Author

Robert George

Robert is a Solutions Architect on the Worldwide Public Sector (WWPS) team who works with customers to design secure, high-performing, and cost-effective systems in the AWS Cloud. He has previously worked in cybersecurity roles focused on designing security architectures, securing enterprise systems, and leading incident response teams for highly regulated environments.