We have all seen in the media numerous occurrences whereby large international organizations have had their data exposed and leaked that had been stored on S3. Any sensitive data stored in the cloud MUST be encrypted, and when storing your data on S3 there are multiple different options that you can choose from to enable you to protect your data with encryption. To help you understand these mechanisms, this course will guide you through the process of how each of them works, not just from an encryption perspective but also at a decryption level. This will allow you to make the right choice when it comes to selecting the most appropriate method of encryption to align with your own internal security strategy.
Applying encryption is a simple task and it can protect you and your customers from data exposure should a malicious user gain access to your S3 buckets.
If you have thoughts or suggestions for this course, please contact Cloud Academy at support@cloudacademy.com.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course series you will be able to explain the encryption and decryption process for:
- Server-Side Encryption with S3 Managed Keys (SSE-S3)
- Server-Side Encryption with KMS Managed Keys (SSE-KMS)
- Server-Side Encryption with Customer Provided Keys (SSE-C)
- Client-Side Encryption with KMS Managed Keys (CSE-KMS)
- Client-Side Encryption with Customer Provided Keys (CSE-C)
Intended Audience
This course is intended for those who have the responsibility of storing, managing, and protecting data that is stored on Amazon S3.
Prerequisites
This is an advanced level course and so it is essential that you have an understanding of S3 and that you have the knowledge to enable you to upload and retrieve data along with how to select different encryption options. In addition to this, you must also be familiar with the KMS service and understand both CMKs and Data encryption keys.
Client-Side Encryption with Customer Provided Keys, CSEC. The encryption process is as follows. Using an AWS SDK, such as the Java client, it will randomly generate a plain text data key which is used to encrypt the object data. The customer provided CMK is then used to encrypt this client-generated data key. The encrypted object data and encrypted data key are then sent to S3. S3 will then store the encrypted object data and associate the encrypted data key as metadata of the encrypted object data. The decryption process is as follows. A request is made by the client to S3 to retrieve the object data. S3 sends both the encrypted object data and the encrypted data key back to the client. The customer-provided CMK is then used to decrypt the encrypted data key. The plain text data key is then used to decrypt the object data. You should now have a deeper understanding of the process of encryption and decryption for each of the encryption methods that S3 offers.
It is a simple process to apply encryption, but understanding what's happening behind the scenes, is essential from a security standpoint. Especially when you are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the data stored in S3. Many of us have seen and heard the news whereby large, international organizations have failed to apply either correct level of permissions, or, indeed, an encryption mechanism to customer data which has been accidentally exposed. Causing a detrimental effect to all organizations involved.
To accompany this course, I've also created an infographic which shows all five encryption options and this can be found using the link on screen. I have also added this URL within the transcript of this lecture.
If you have any feedback on this course, positive or negative, please do get in touch with us here at Cloud Academy by sending an email to support@cloudacademy.com.
Thank you for your time, and good luck with your continued learning of cloud computing. Thank you.
Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data center and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.
To date, Stuart has created 150+ courses relating to Cloud reaching over 180,000 students, mostly within the AWS category and with a heavy focus on security and compliance.
Stuart is a member of the AWS Community Builders Program for his contributions towards AWS.
He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.
In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.
Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.