Encryption Encryption at rest Encryption in transit

Data protection in Amazon MQ

The AWS shared responsibility model applies to data protection in Amazon MQ. 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. This content includes the security configuration and management tasks for the AWS services that you use. For more information about data privacy, see the Data Privacy FAQ. For information about data protection in Europe, see 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 (successor to AWS Single Sign-On) 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 recommend TLS 1.2 or later.
Set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail.
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 140-2 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) 140-2.

We strongly recommend that you never put confidential or sensitive information, such as your customers' email addresses, into tags or free-form fields such as a Name field. This includes when you work with Amazon MQ or other AWS services using the console, API, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs. Any data that you enter into tags or free-form 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.

For both Amazon MQ for ActiveMQ and Amazon MQ for RabbitMQ brokers, do not use any personally identifiable information (PII) or other confidential or sensitive information for broker names or usernames when creating resources via the broker web console, or the Amazon MQ API. Broker names and usernames are accessible to other AWS services, including CloudWatch Logs. Broker usernames are not intended to be used for private or sensitive data.

Encryption

User data stored in Amazon MQ is encrypted at rest. Amazon MQ encryption at rest provides enhanced security by encrypting your data using encryption keys stored in the AWS Key Management Service (KMS). This service helps reduce the operational burden and complexity involved in protecting sensitive data. With encryption at rest, you can build security-sensitive applications that meet encryption compliance and regulatory requirements.

All connections between Amazon MQ brokers use Transport layer Security (TLS) to provide encryption in transit.

Amazon MQ encrypts messages at rest and in transit using encryption keys that it manages and stores securely. For more information, see the AWS Encryption SDK Developer Guide.

Encryption at rest

Amazon MQ integrates with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to offer transparent server-side encryption. Amazon MQ always encrypts your data at rest.

When you create an Amazon MQ for ActiveMQ broker, you can specify the AWS KMS key that you want Amazon MQ to use to encrypt your data at rest. If you don’t specify a KMS key, Amazon MQ will use an AWS owned KMS key for you to encrypt data at rest. For more information about KMS keys, see AWS KMS keys.

When creating a broker, you can configure what Amazon MQ uses for your encryption key by selecting one of the following.

Amazon MQ owned KMS key (default) — The key is owned and managed by Amazon MQ and is not in your account.
AWS managed KMS key — The AWS managed KMS key (aws/mq) is a KMS key in your account that is created, managed, and used on your behalf by Amazon MQ.
Select existing customer managed KMS key — Customer managed KMS keys are created and managed by you in AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

Important

For Amazon MQ for ActiveMQ brokers that use Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) to store message data, if you revoke the grant that gives Amazon EFS permission to use the KMS keys in your account, Amazon MQ cannot access this data and your broker will stop working. When you revoke a grant for Amazon EFS, it will not take place immediately. To revoke access rights, delete your broker rather than revoking the grant.
Note that disabling a key or revoking a grant will not take place immediately.
Revoking a grant cannot be undone. Instead, we suggest deleting the broker if you need to revoke access rights.

For more information about KMS keys, see AWS KMS keys in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

Encryption in transit

Amazon MQ encrypts data in transit between the brokers of your Amazon MQ deployment. All data that passes between Amazon MQ brokers is encrypted using Transport layer Security (TLS). This is true for all available protocols.

By default, Amazon MQ brokers use the recommended TLS 1.2 to encrypt data.