AWS KMS

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a fully managed service from Amazon Web Services that enables you to create, control, and manage cryptographic keys used to protect your data across AWS workloads and applications. It is designed to simplify and centralize key management, helping organizations secure sensitive data by providing robust encryption, digital signing, and access control capabilities.

Key Features and Capabilities

• Centralized Key Management: AWS KMS allows you to create, manage, rotate, disable, and define usage policies for cryptographic keys from a single, centralized location.
• Integrated Security: Keys are protected by FIPS 140-3 (and previously FIPS 140-2) validated hardware security modules (HSMs), ensuring high levels of security and compliance for cryptographic operations.
• Encryption and Decryption: Use KMS to encrypt and decrypt data stored in AWS services (like S3, EBS, RDS) or within your own applications, supporting both symmetric and asymmetric key operations.
• Digital Signing and Verification: Generate and verify digital signatures using asymmetric key pairs, ensuring data authenticity and integrity.
• Audit and Compliance: AWS KMS is integrated with AWS CloudTrail, providing detailed logs of all key usage and management actions to support auditing and compliance requirements.
• Scalability and High Availability: The service is designed to automatically scale to meet the needs of your workloads, with high durability and regional redundancy.
• Integration with AWS Services: KMS is natively integrated with over 100 AWS services, making it easy to enable encryption and manage keys across your cloud environment.

How AWS KMS Works

• Key Hierarchy: At the core of AWS KMS is the concept of a KMS key, a logical container for cryptographic key material. Keys never leave the service unencrypted and are managed entirely within AWS KMS.
• Key Types: There are three main types of KMS keys:
  • Customer managed keys (created and managed by you)
  • AWS managed keys (created by AWS services for your resources)
  • AWS owned keys (used by AWS for internal service operations)
• Key Usage: KMS keys can be used for:
  • Data encryption, decryption, and re-encryption
  • Message signing and verification
  • Generating and verifying HMAC codes
  • Generating random numbers for cryptographic applications

Why Use AWS KMS?

• Security: Protects your encryption keys with strong hardware-based security.
• Control: Fine-grained access policies let you control who can manage and use your keys.
• Compliance: Helps meet regulatory requirements with detailed logging and robust key management practices.
• Simplicity: Reduces the complexity of key management, making it accessible even for organizations without deep cryptographic expertise.