Introducing New Encryption Controls for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud: Enhancing Data Security and Compliance
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the release of a powerful new feature for its Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) services: VPC Encryption Controls. This innovation is set to revolutionize how organizations handle data encryption within and across VPCs, particularly focusing on in-transit data security. This new capability offers organizations an efficient way to audit and enforce encryption standards, ensuring compliance with various regulatory frameworks.
The Challenges of Encryption Compliance
In today’s digital landscape, organizations across sectors like finance, healthcare, government, and retail face the daunting task of maintaining encryption compliance. The complexity of managing encryption across expansive cloud infrastructures often requires cobbling together a variety of solutions. This includes handling intricate public key infrastructures (PKIs) and manually tracking encryption across network paths, typically using error-prone spreadsheets. The challenge only grows as infrastructure scales.
AWS Nitro-based instances have simplified part of this process by automatically encrypting traffic at the hardware level without compromising performance. However, organizations need straightforward methods to extend such encryption capabilities across their entire VPC infrastructure. This is crucial for compliance with regulatory standards like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). These frameworks mandate end-to-end encryption, and organizations require centralized control and visibility over encryption statuses without compromising on performance or navigating complex key management systems.
VPC Encryption Controls: A Two-Mode Solution
AWS’s VPC Encryption Controls introduce two modes of operation: Monitor and Enforce. In Monitor mode, organizations can audit the encryption status of their traffic flows and pinpoint resources that might allow unencrypted, or plaintext, traffic. This feature includes a new encryption-status field within VPC flow logs, providing visibility into whether traffic is encrypted via Nitro hardware, application-layer encryption (Transport Layer Security, or TLS), or both.
Once organizations identify resources requiring encryption, they can take appropriate steps to implement it. Various AWS services, including Network Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Fargate tasks, can automatically migrate infrastructure to Nitro hardware seamlessly without service interruptions. For other resources, such as previous-generation Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, users need to switch to modern Nitro-based instance types or configure TLS encryption at the application level.
After migrating all resources to encryption-compliant infrastructure, organizations can switch to Enforce mode. This mode ensures that all future resources are only created on compatible Nitro instances, and any unencrypted traffic is dropped if incorrect protocols or ports are detected.
Hands-On with VPC Encryption Controls
To understand how these controls work, consider a demonstration involving three EC2 instances. One acts as a web server with Nginx installed on port 80, serving an unencrypted HTML page. The other two continuously make HTTP GET requests to the server, generating clear text traffic within the VPC. By using the AWS Management Console, users can enable encryption controls in Monitor mode, allowing them to audit the encryption status of their VPC traffic and identify non-encrypted resources.
The console provides detailed logs showing the flow direction, traffic path, source and destination addresses, and encryption status, with encryption-status values indicating whether traffic is encrypted. The dashboard highlights resources that don’t support encryption, such as internet gateways and elastic network interfaces of instances not based on Nitro.
Transitioning to Enforce Mode
After ensuring all resources support encryption, users can transition to Enforce mode using either the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). This shift mandates that all VPC resources support encryption, either at the hardware or application level, and requires no action for most resources. AWS services accessed through PrivateLink and gateway endpoints automatically enforce application-layer encryption, accepting only TLS-encrypted traffic.
As part of the automatic migration to encryption-compliant hardware, AWS transparently transitions Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, AWS Fargate clusters, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters to support encryption without user intervention. For resources like EC2 Instances, Auto Scaling groups, and various AWS database services, users must select instances supporting modern Nitro hardware encryption.
Important Considerations for AWS Transit Gateway
An essential consideration for users employing AWS Transit Gateway through AWS CloudFormation is the requirement for additional IAM permissions. Specifically, permissions for modifying Transit Gateway options are necessary for enabling encryption support, as CloudFormation follows a two-step process for Transit Gateway creation.
Availability and Cost
VPC Encryption Controls are available in multiple AWS Regions, including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and more. The service is currently free to use until March 1, 2026, with pricing details to be updated closer to the date. This initiative underscores AWS’s commitment to enhancing data security and compliance for its users.
For more information and to explore these features, users can visit the VPC encryption controls documentation or access them through their AWS account. These controls represent a significant step forward in data security, helping organizations meet stringent compliance standards while maintaining high performance and ease of management.
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