Data protection in AWS CloudHSM

The AWS shared responsibility model applies to data protection in AWS CloudHSM. 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. You are also responsible for 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 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 require TLS 1.2 and recommend TLS 1.3.

• Set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail. For information about using CloudTrail trails to capture AWS activities, see Working with CloudTrail trails in the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

• 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 140-3 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) 140-3.

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

Encryption at rest

When AWS CloudHSM makes a backup from an HSM, the HSM encrypts its data before sending it to AWS CloudHSM. The data is encrypted using a unique, ephemeral encryption key. For more information, see AWS CloudHSM cluster backups.

Encryption in transit

Communication between the AWS CloudHSM client and the HSM in your cluster is encrypted from end to end. This communication can be decrypted only by your client and your HSM. For more information, see End-to-end encryption.