# Ensure data protection in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
The AWS [shared responsibility model](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/) applies to data protection in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. As described in this model, AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all of the AWS 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 AWS services that you use. For more information about data privacy, see the [Data Privacy FAQ](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/). For information about data protection in Europe, see the [AWS Shared Responsibility Model and GDPR](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/the-aws-shared-responsibility-model-and-gdpr/) blog post on the *AWS Security Blog*.
For data protection purposes, we recommend that you protect AWS account credentials and set up individual users with AWS IAM Identity Center or AWS 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 AWS resources. We require TLS 1.2 and recommend TLS 1.3.
+ Set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail. For information about using CloudTrail trails to capture AWS activities, see [Working with CloudTrail trails](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-trails.html) in the *AWS CloudTrail User Guide*.
+ Use AWS encryption solutions, along with all default security controls within AWS 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 140-3 validated cryptographic modules when accessing AWS 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) 140-3](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/fips/).
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 VPC or other AWS services using the console, API, AWS CLI, or AWS 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.
# Ensure internetwork traffic privacy in Amazon VPC
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud provides features that you can use to increase and monitor the security for your virtual private cloud (VPC):
+ **Security groups**: Security groups allow specific inbound and outbound traffic at the resource level (such as an EC2 instance). When you launch an instance, you can associate it with one or more security groups. Each instance in your VPC could belong to a different set of security groups. If you don't specify a security group when you launch an instance, the instance is automatically associated with the default security group for its VPC. For more information, see [Security groups](vpc-security-groups.md).
+ **Network access control lists (ACL)**: Network ACLs allow or deny specific inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level. For more information, see [Control subnet traffic with network access control lists](vpc-network-acls.md).
+ **Flow logs**: Flow logs capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC. You can create a flow log for a VPC, subnet, or individual network interface. Flow log data is published to CloudWatch Logs or Amazon S3, and it can help you diagnose overly restrictive or overly permissive security group and network ACL rules. For more information, see [Logging IP traffic using VPC Flow Logs](flow-logs.md).
+ **Traffic mirroring**: You can copy network traffic from an elastic network interface of an Amazon EC2 instance. You can then send the traffic to out-of-band security and monitoring appliances. For more information, see the [Traffic Mirroring Guide](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/mirroring/).