Encrypting Data In Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services is a deep and rich cloud platform supporting a wide variety of operating systems, AWS services, and third party applications and services. It is a bewildering array of capabilities with lots of places to store sensitive data. Let’s explore some of the ways that our Alliance Key Manager solution helps AWS customers and partners protect this data. This is a bird’s eye view, and we’ll dive into this in more depth in future blogs:

Amazon AWS Services

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Alliance Key Manager provides encryption key retrieval and an on-device encryption service to make it easy for your applications to encrypt data in RDS. Townsend Security SDKs can easily be used to provide encryption at the application layer.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Alliance Key Manager lets you retrieve 256-bit AES keys in Base64 encoded format ready for use with RDS customer supplied encryption key services. You can easily deploy an AKM dedicated key management service to support encrypting and decrypting files in S3 storage.

Amazon Elastic Block Storage
Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) provide access to EBS for simple unstructured storage requirements. Townsend Security SDKs can easily be used to provide encryption at the application layer.

Amazon DynamoDB (NoSQL)
The AWS NoSQL implementation does not provide encryption services, but you can easily implement encryption at the application layer using the Townsend Security SDKs. With support for many programming languages you can implement the encryption and key management services you need to meet compliance regulations.

Application Databases:

Microsoft SQL Server
Alliance Key Manager includes a license for Townsend Security’s Key Connection for SQL Server application that supports Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Cell Level Encryption for Enterprise edition. This EKM provider installs in your Windows SQL Server environment and enables encryption without any programming. For SQL Server Standard and Web Editions Alliance Key Manager includes a license for the Townsend Security Windows Client for snap-in encryption support.

Oracle Database
Oracle Database encryption support is provided through SDKs that are free of charge with Alliance Key Manager. Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and C# SDKs and sample code enable rapid deployment of encryption in Oracle environments. Sample PL/SQL code is also available for Oracle Linux platforms.

MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, etc.
Open source database encryption support is provided through SDKs that are free of charge with Alliance Key Manager. Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and C# SDKs and sample code enable rapid deployment of encryption in these environments.

Software SDKs for Amazon Web Services:

A rich set of application SDKs are available for many programming languages. These SDKs provide support for Java, Microsoft .NET languages (C#, VB.NET, etc.), Perl, Ruby, Python, PHP, and others. These SDKs are provided at no charge to Alliance Key Manager customers.

Application Plugins for Amazon Web Services:

Drupal Encryption and Key Management
Alliance Key Manager integrates naturally with the Drupal web CMS using the Drupal Encrypt module and Townsend Security’s Key Connection for Drupal module available on Drupal.org. Drupal users can retrieve encryption keys for use with local encryption, or use the Alliance Key Manager Encryption Service to encrypt and decrypt data in the key manager with NIST-validated AES encryption.

SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption
Alliance Key Manager integrates directly into the Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition database to provide Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) support using the Townsend Security Key Connection for SQL Server application.

SQL Server Cell Level Encryption
Alliance Key Manager integrates directly into the Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition database to provide Cell Level Encryption support using the Townsend Security Key Connection for SQL Server application.