AWS Manages the encryption keys for us

  • Fully integrated with IAM
  • Audit and track on API calls with CloudTrail
  • Integrated with pretty much all the services that requires encryption
  • Idea: Never ever store the key in plain text, but store in Runtime
  • KMS keys are available through API calls

KMS key types

  • AWS Owned keys, SSE-S3, SSE-SQS, SSE-DDB
  • AWS Managed keys, aws/ebs, aws/rds
  • Customer managed keys 1$ per month + Each API call made to the service 3cents / 1000 calls

CMK is more like a container for the actual key + its control info.