Security in Amazon Redshift

Security of the cloud – Amazon is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs Amazon services in the Amazon Cloud. Amazon also provides you with services that you can use securely. The effectiveness of our security is regularly tested and verified by third-party auditors as part of the Amazon compliance programs. To learn about the compliance programs that apply to Amazon Redshift, see Amazon services in scope by compliance program.

Security in the cloud – Your responsibility is determined by the Amazon service that you use. You are also responsible for other factors including the sensitivity of your data, your organization's requirements, and applicable laws and regulations.

Cluster management – The ability to create, configure, and delete clusters is controlled by the permissions given to the user or account associated with your Amazon security credentials. Users with the proper permissions can use the Amazon Web Services Management Console, Amazon Command Line Interface (CLI), or Amazon Redshift Application Programming Interface (API) to manage their clusters. This access is managed by using IAM policies.

Cluster connectivity – Amazon Redshift security groups specify the Amazon instances that are authorized to connect to an Amazon Redshift cluster in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) format. For information about creating Amazon Redshift, Amazon EC2, and Amazon VPC security groups and associating them with clusters, see Amazon Redshift security groups.

Database access – The ability to access database objects, such as tables and views, is controlled by database user accounts in the Amazon Redshift database. Users can only access resources in the database that their user accounts have been granted permission to access. You create these Amazon Redshift user accounts and manage permissions by using the CREATE USER, CREATE GROUP, GRANT, and REVOKE SQL statements. For more information, see Managing database security in the Amazon Redshift Database Developer Guide.

Temporary database credentials and single sign-on – In addition to creating and managing database users using SQL commands, such as CREATE USER and ALTER USER, you can configure your SQL client with custom Amazon Redshift JDBC or ODBC drivers. These drivers manage the process of creating database users and temporary passwords as part of the database logon process.

The drivers authenticate database users based on Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication. If you already manage user identities outside of Amazon, you can use a SAML 2.0-compliant identity provider (IdP) to manage access to Amazon Redshift resources. You use an IAM role to configure your IdP and Amazon to permit your federated users to generate temporary database credentials and log on to Amazon Redshift databases. For more information, see Using IAM authentication to generate database user credentials.