Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance

You can use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) from your application to encrypt a connection to a DB instance running MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL.

SSL/TLS connections provide a layer of security by encrypting data that moves between your client and DB instance. Optionally, your SSL/TLS connection can perform server identity verification by validating the server certificate installed on your DB instance. To require server identity verification, follow this general process:

Certificate authorities

The certificate authority (CA) is the certificate that identifies the root CA at the top of the certificate chain. The CA signs the DB server certificate, which is installed on each DB instance. The DB server certificate identifies the DB instance as a trusted server.

Amazon RDS provides the following CAs to sign the DB server certificate for a DB instance.

These CA certificates are included in the regional and global certificate bundle. When you use the rds-ca-rsa2048-g1 CA with a database, RDS manages the DB server certificate on the database. RDS rotates the DB server certificate automatically before it expires.

Setting the CA for your database

You can set the CA for a database when you perform the following tasks:

The available CAs depend on the DB engine and DB engine version. When you use the Amazon Web Services Management Console, you can choose the CA using the Certificate authority setting, as shown in the following image.

The console only shows the CAs that are available for the DB engine and DB engine version. If you are using the Amazon CLI, you can set the CA for a DB instance using the create-db-instance or modify-db-instance command.

If you are using the Amazon CLI, you can see the available CAs for your account by using the describe-certificates command. This command also shows the expiration date for each CA in ValidTill in the output. You can find the CAs that are available for a specific DB engine and DB engine version using the describe-db-engine-versions command.

The following example shows the CAs available for the default RDS for PostgreSQL DB engine version.

aws rds describe-db-engine-versions --default-only --engine postgres

Your output is similar to the following. The available CAs are listed in SupportedCACertificateIdentifiers. The output also shows whether the DB engine version supports rotating the certificate without restart in SupportsCertificateRotationWithoutRestart.

{
    "DBEngineVersions": [
        {
            "Engine": "postgres",
            "MajorEngineVersion": "13",
            "EngineVersion": "13.4",
            "DBParameterGroupFamily": "postgres13",
            "DBEngineDescription": "PostgreSQL",
            "DBEngineVersionDescription": "PostgreSQL 13.4-R1",
            "ValidUpgradeTarget": [],
            "SupportsLogExportsToCloudwatchLogs": false,
            "SupportsReadReplica": true,
            "SupportedFeatureNames": [
                "Lambda"
            ],
            "Status": "available",
            "SupportsParallelQuery": false,
            "SupportsGlobalDatabases": false,
            "SupportsBabelfish": false,
            "SupportsCertificateRotationWithoutRestart": true,
            "SupportedCACertificateIdentifiers": [
                "rds-ca-2019",
                "rds-ca-rsa2048-g1",
                "rds-ca-ecc384-g1",
                "rds-ca-rsa4096-g1"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

DB server certificate validities

The validity of DB server certificate depends on the DB engine and DB engine version. If the DB engine version supports rotating the certificate without restart, the validity of the DB server certificate is 1 year. Otherwise the validity is 3 years.

For more information about DB server certificate rotation, see Automatic server certificate rotation.

Viewing the CA for your database

You can view the details about the CA for a DB instance by viewing the Connectivity & security tab in the console, as in the following image.

If you are using the Amazon CLI, you can view the details about the CA for a DB instance by using the describe-db-instances command.

To check the contents of your CA certificate bundle, use the following command:

keytool -printcert -v -file global-bundle.pem

Certificate bundles for specific Amazon Web Services Regions

To get a certificate bundle that contains both the intermediate and root certificates for the China (Beijing) Amazon Region or China (Ningxia) Amazon Region, downloaded at https://rds-truststore.s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/global/global-bundle.pem. If your application is on Microsoft Windows and requires a PKCS7 file, you can download the PKCS7 certificate bundle that contains both the intermediate and root certificates at https://rds-truststore.s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/global/global-bundle.p7b.

To get a certificate bundle that contains both the intermediate and root certificates for an Amazon Region, download from the link for the Amazon Region in the following table.