Some AWS SDKs Security Features You Should Know About

The AWS SDK team recently added and documented some security-related features that we think you shouldn’t miss. Check these out!

Updates for managing access keys in the .NET and Java SDKs. In Referencing Credentials using Profiles, blogger Norm Johanson describes how you can now put a credentials file in your user folder. This great security enhancement makes it easier to keep access keys in a safe and secure location when you use the SDKs, as we recommend in our best practices for managing access keys. You can also keep multiple configuration profiles (as you can  for the AWS CLI), which makes it very easy to test code using the credentials for different users. These features are available in both the .NET SDK and the Java SDK.

Encryption features for Amazon S3. In Using AmazonS3EncryptionClient to Send Secure Data Between Two Parties, blogger Hanson Char describes a little-known feature—how to securely share proprietary data on S3 using a public/private key pair. This feature is available in the .NET, Java, and Ruby SDKs. And in Amazon S3 Client-Side Authenticated Encryption, Hanson alerts us to a new feature of the Java SDK that enables you not only to keep S3 data encrypted at rest, but to enhance the security of the data with a new feature that adds an integrity check for both the data and the envelope key.

To keep up with the fast-moving AWS SDK team, be sure to subscribe to their blogs—you can find their blogs under AWS Blogs on the side of this page.

– Mike