Security in Amazon Aurora - Amazon Aurora

Security in Amazon Aurora

Cloud security at AWS is the highest priority. As an AWS customer, you benefit from a data center and network architecture that are built to meet the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations.

Security is a shared responsibility between AWS and you. The shared responsibility model describes this as security of the cloud and security in the cloud:

  • Security of the cloud – AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs AWS services in the AWS Cloud. AWS also provides you with services that you can use securely. Third-party auditors regularly test and verify the effectiveness of our security as part of the AWS compliance programs. To learn about the compliance programs that apply to Amazon Aurora (Aurora), see AWS services in scope by compliance program.

  • Security in the cloud – Your responsibility is determined by the AWS 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.

This documentation helps you understand how to apply the shared responsibility model when using Amazon Aurora. The following topics show you how to configure Amazon Aurora to meet your security and compliance objectives. You also learn how to use other AWS services that help you monitor and secure your Amazon Aurora resources.

You can manage access to your Amazon Aurora resources and your databases on a DB cluster. The method you use to manage access depends on what type of task the user needs to perform with Amazon Aurora:

  • Run your DB cluster in a virtual private cloud (VPC) based on the Amazon VPC service for the greatest possible network access control. For more information about creating a DB cluster in a VPC, see Amazon VPC and Amazon Aurora.

  • Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to assign permissions that determine who is allowed to manage Amazon Aurora resources. For example, you can use IAM to determine who is allowed to create, describe, modify, and delete DB clusters, tag resources, or modify security groups.

    To review IAM policy examples, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Aurora.

  • Use security groups to control what IP addresses or Amazon EC2 instances can connect to your databases on a DB cluster. When you first create a DB cluster, its firewall prevents any database access except through rules specified by an associated security group.

  • Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections with DB clusters running the Aurora MySQL or Aurora PostgreSQL. For more information on using SSL/TLS with a DB cluster, see Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB cluster.

  • Use Amazon Aurora encryption to secure your DB clusters and snapshots at rest. Amazon Aurora encryption uses the industry standard AES-256 encryption algorithm to encrypt your data on the server that hosts your DB cluster. For more information, see Encrypting Amazon Aurora resources.

  • Use the security features of your DB engine to control who can log in to the databases on a DB cluster. These features work just as if the database was on your local network.

    For information about security with Aurora MySQL, see Security with Amazon Aurora MySQL. For information about security with Aurora PostgreSQL, see Security with Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.

Aurora is part of the managed database service Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Amazon RDS is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. If you are not already familiar with Amazon RDS, see the Amazon RDS user guide.

Aurora includes a high-performance storage subsystem. Its MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible database engines are customized to take advantage of that fast distributed storage. Aurora also automates and standardizes database clustering and replication, which are typically among the most challenging aspects of database configuration and administration.

For both Amazon RDS and Aurora, you can access the RDS API programmatically, and you can use the AWS CLI to access the RDS API interactively. Some RDS API operations and AWS CLI commands apply to both Amazon RDS and Aurora, while others apply to either Amazon RDS or Aurora. For information about RDS API operations, see Amazon RDS API reference. For more information about the AWS CLI, see AWS Command Line Interface reference for Amazon RDS.

Note

You have to configure security only for your use cases. You don't have to configure security access for processes that Amazon Aurora manages. These include creating backups, automatic failover, and other processes.

For more information on managing access to Amazon Aurora resources and your databases on a DB cluster, see the following topics.

Topics