Security considerations and best practices

Amazon Q provides powerful capabilities that can modify your system and AWS resources. Understanding security implications and following best practices helps you use these capabilities safely.

Understanding security risks

When using Amazon Q, be aware of the following potential security risks:

• Unintended system changes: Amazon Q may interpret your requests in unexpected ways, leading to unintended modifications

• AWS resource modifications: Resources could be created, modified, or deleted, potentially affecting production environments or incurring costs

• Data loss: Commands that delete or overwrite files could result in data loss

• Security vulnerabilities: Commands might compromise system security if not properly reviewed

These risks are significantly increased when using /tools trustall or /acceptall, which bypass confirmation prompts.

Specific examples of risks include:

• A request to "clean up old files" might delete important configuration files

• A request to "optimize my EC2 instances" might terminate running instances

• A request to "fix security issues" might modify permissions in ways that expose sensitive data

Warning

AWS recommends against using /tools trustall or /acceptall mode in production environments or when working with sensitive data or resources. You are responsible for all actions performed by Amazon Q when these modes are enabled.

General security best practices

When using Amazon Q in any environment, especially those with sensitive files, private keys, tokens, or other confidential information, consider implementing these security measures:

Restricting file access

By default, Amazon Q can read files without asking for permission each time (fs_read is trusted by default). For sensitive environments, you can restrict this behavior:

Amazon Q> /tools untrust fs_read

With this setting, Amazon Q will ask for your explicit permission before reading any file. This gives you granular control over which files Amazon Q can access during your session.

You can also make this setting persistent by adding it to your shell startup script:

echo 'alias q="q --untrust-fs-read"' >> ~/.bashrc

This ensures that every new Amazon Q session starts with fs_read untrusted, requiring explicit permission for file access.

Additional security measures

For environments with highly sensitive information, consider these additional measures:

• Use Amazon Q in a dedicated development environment that doesn't contain sensitive credentials or data

• Store sensitive files outside your project directories or in locations with restricted permissions

• Use environment variables for sensitive values instead of hardcoding them in files

• Consider using /tools untrust use_aws to require explicit permission before making AWS API calls

• Use project rules to define security guidelines and restrictions (see Using project rules)

Using /tools trustall safely

If you must use /tools trustall or /acceptall for specific workflows, follow these safety practices to minimize risks:

• Only use in development or testing environments, never in production

• Enable /tools trustall only for specific tasks, then immediately disable it using /tools reset to return to default permissions

• Back up important data before enabling /tools trustall

• Use AWS credentials with minimal permissions when /tools trustall is enabled

• Carefully monitor all actions Amazon Q takes while /tools trustall is enabled

To return to the default permission settings after using /tools trustall, use the reset command:

Amazon Q> /tools reset

This reverts all tools to their default permission levels, with only fs_read trusted by default.