Data protection in Amazon Elastic Block Store - Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS data securityEncryption at rest and in transitKMS key management
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).

Data protection in Amazon Elastic Block Store

The Amazon shared responsibility model applies to data protection in Amazon Elastic Block Store. As described in this model, Amazon is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all of the Amazon Web Services Cloud. You are responsible for maintaining control over your content that is hosted on this infrastructure. You are also responsible for the security configuration and management tasks for the Amazon Web Services that you use. For more information about data privacy, see the Data Privacy FAQ.

For data protection purposes, we recommend that you protect Amazon Web Services account credentials and set up individual users with Amazon IAM Identity Center or Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM). That way, each user is given only the permissions necessary to fulfill their job duties. We also recommend that you secure your data in the following ways:

  • Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with each account.

  • Use SSL/TLS to communicate with Amazon resources. We require TLS 1.2 and recommend TLS 1.3.

  • Set up API and user activity logging with Amazon CloudTrail.

  • Use Amazon encryption solutions, along with all default security controls within Amazon Web Services.

  • Use advanced managed security services such as Amazon Macie, which assists in discovering and securing sensitive data that is stored in Amazon S3.

  • If you require FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules when accessing Amazon through a command line interface or an API, use a FIPS endpoint. For more information about the available FIPS endpoints, see Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2.

We strongly recommend that you never put confidential or sensitive information, such as your customers' email addresses, into tags or free-form text fields such as a Name field. This includes when you work with Amazon EBS or other Amazon Web Services using the console, API, Amazon CLI, or Amazon SDKs. Any data that you enter into tags or free-form text fields used for names may be used for billing or diagnostic logs. If you provide a URL to an external server, we strongly recommend that you do not include credentials information in the URL to validate your request to that server.

Amazon EBS data security

Amazon EBS volumes are presented to you as raw, unformatted block devices. These devices are logical devices that are created on the EBS infrastructure and the Amazon EBS service ensures that the devices are logically empty (that is, the raw blocks are zeroed or they contain cryptographically pseudorandom data) prior to any use or re-use by a customer.

If you have procedures that require that all data be erased using a specific method, either after or before use (or both), such as those detailed in DoD 5220.22-M (National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual) or NIST 800-88 (Guidelines for Media Sanitization), you have the ability to do so on Amazon EBS. That block-level activity will be reflected down to the underlying storage media within the Amazon EBS service.

Encryption at rest and in transit

Amazon EBS encryption is an encryption solution that enables you to encrypt your Amazon EBS volumes and Amazon EBS snapshots using Amazon Key Management Service cryptographic keys. EBS encryption operations occur on the servers that host Amazon EC2 instances, ensuring the security of both data-at-rest and data-in-transit between an instance and its attached volume and any subsequent snapshots. For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.

KMS key management

When you create an encrypted Amazon EBS volume or snapshot, you specify an Amazon Key Management Service key. By default, Amazon EBS uses the Amazon managed KMS key for Amazon EBS in your account and Region (aws/ebs). However, you can specify a customer managed KMS key that you create and manage. Using a customer managed KMS key gives you more flexibility, including the ability to create, rotate, and disable KMS keys.

To use a customer managed KMS key, you must give users permission to use the KMS key. For more information, see Permissions for users.

Important

Amazon EBS supports only symmetric KMS keys. You can't use asymmetric KMS keys to encrypt an Amazon EBS volume and snapshots. For help determining whether a KMS key is symmetric or asymmetric, see Identifying asymmetric KMS keys.

For each volume, Amazon EBS asks Amazon KMS to generate a unique data key encrypted under the KMS key that you specify. Amazon EBS stores the encrypted data key with the volume. Then, when you attach the volume to an Amazon EC2 instance, Amazon EBS calls Amazon KMS to decrypt the data key. Amazon EBS uses the plaintext data key in hypervisor memory to encrypt all I/O to the volume. For more information, see How EBS encryption works.