Protect jobs by using an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud - Amazon Comprehend
Configure a job for Amazon VPC access Configure your VPC for Amazon Comprehend jobs

Protect jobs by using an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

Amazon Comprehend uses a variety of security measures to ensure the safety of your data with our job containers where it's stored while being used by Amazon Comprehend. However, job containers access AWS resources—such as the Amazon S3 buckets where you store data and model artifacts—over the internet.

To control access to your data, we recommend that you create a virtual private cloud (VPC) and configure it so that the data and containers aren't accessible over the internet. For information about creating and configuring a VPC, see Getting Started With Amazon VPC in the Amazon VPC User Guide. Using a VPC helps to protect your data because you can configure your VPC so that it is not connected to the internet. Using a VPC also allows you to monitor all network traffic in and out of our job containers by using VPC flow logs. For more information, see VPC Flow Logs in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

You specify your VPC configuration when you create a job, by specifying the subnets and security groups. When you specify the subnets and security groups, Amazon Comprehend creates elastic network interfaces (ENIs) that are associated with your security groups in one of the subnets. ENIs allow our job containers to connect to resources in your VPC. For information about ENIs, see Elastic Network Interfaces in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Note

For jobs, you can only configure subnets with a default tenancy VPC in which your instance runs on shared hardware. For more information on the tenancy attribute for VPCs, see Dedicated Instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Configure a job for Amazon VPC access

To specify subnets and security groups in your VPC, use the VpcConfig request parameter of the applicable API, or provide this information when you create a job in the Amazon Comprehend console. Amazon Comprehend uses this information to create ENIs and attach them to our job containers. The ENIs provide our job containers with a network connection within your VPC that is not connected to the internet.

The following APIs contain the VpcConfig request parameter:

The following is an example of the VpcConfig parameter that you include in your API call: 

"VpcConfig": { 
      "SecurityGroupIds": [
          " sg-0123456789abcdef0"
          ],
      "Subnets": [
          "subnet-0123456789abcdef0",
          "subnet-0123456789abcdef1",
          "subnet-0123456789abcdef2"
          ]
      }

To configure a VPC from the Amazon Comprehend console, choose the configuration details from the optional VPC Settings section when creating the job.

Optional VPC section in Creating Analysis Job

Configure your VPC for Amazon Comprehend jobs

When configuring the VPC for your Amazon Comprehend jobs, use the following guidelines. For information about setting up a VPC, see Working with VPCs and Subnets in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Ensure That Subnets Have Enough IP Addresses

Your VPC subnets should have at least two private IP addresses for each instance in a job. For more information, see VPC and Subnet Sizing for IPv4 in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Create an Amazon S3 VPC Endpoint

If you configure your VPC so that job containers don't have access to the internet, they can't connect to the Amazon S3 buckets that contain your data unless you create a VPC endpoint that allows access. By creating a VPC endpoint, you allow the job containers to access your data during training and analysis jobs.

When you create the VPC endpoint, configure these values:

  • Select the service category as AWS Services

  • Specify the service as com.amazonaws.region.s3

  • Select Gateway as the VPC Endpoint type

If you're using AWS CloudFormation to create the VPC endpoint, follow the AWS CloudFormation VPCEndpoint documentation. The following example shows the VPCEndpoint configuration in a AWS CloudFormation template.


  VpcEndpoint:
    Type: AWS::EC2::VPCEndpoint
    Properties:
      PolicyDocument:
        Version: '2012-10-17'
        Statement:
          - Action:
              - s3:GetObject
              - s3:PutObject
              - s3:ListBucket
              - s3:GetBucketLocation
              - s3:DeleteObject
              - s3:ListMultipartUploadParts
              - s3:AbortMultipartUpload
            Effect: Allow
            Resource:
              - "*"
            Principal: "*"
      RouteTableIds:
        - Ref: RouteTable
      ServiceName:
        Fn::Join:
          - ''
          - - com.amazonaws.
            - Ref: AWS::Region
            - ".s3"
      VpcId:
        Ref: VPC

We recommend that you also create a custom policy that allows only requests from your VPC to access to your S3 buckets. For more information, see Endpoints for Amazon S3 in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

The following policy allows access to S3 buckets. Edit this policy to allow access only the resources that your job needs. 

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetBucketLocation",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Use default DNS settings for your endpoint route table, so that standard Amazon S3 URLs (for example, http://s3-aws-region.amazonaws.com/DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET) resolve. If you don't use default DNS settings, ensure that the URLs that you use to specify the locations of the data in your jobs resolve by configuring the endpoint route tables. For information about VPC endpoint route tables, see Routing for Gateway Endpoints in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

The default endpoint policy allows users to install packages from the Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2 repositories on our jobs container. If you don't want users to install packages from that repository, create a custom endpoint policy that explicitly denies access to the Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2 repositories. Comprehend itself doesn't need any such packages, so there won't be any functionality impact. The following is an example of a policy that denies access to these repositories: 

{ 
    "Statement": [ 
      { 
        "Sid": "AmazonLinuxAMIRepositoryAccess",
        "Principal": "*",
        "Action": [ 
            "s3:GetObject" 
        ],
        "Effect": "Deny",
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::packages.*.amazonaws.com/*",
            "arn:aws:s3:::repo.*.amazonaws.com/*"
        ] 
      } 
    ] 
} 

{ 
    "Statement": [ 
        { "Sid": "AmazonLinux2AMIRepositoryAccess",
          "Principal": "*",
          "Action": [ 
              "s3:GetObject" 
              ],
          "Effect": "Deny",
          "Resource": [
              "arn:aws:s3:::amazonlinux.*.amazonaws.com/*" 
              ] 
         } 
    ] 
}

Permissions for the DataAccessRole

When you use a VPC with your analysis job, the DataAccessRole used for the Create* and Start* operations must also have permissions to the VPC from which the input documents and the output bucket are accessed.

The following policy provides the access needed to the DataAccessRole used for the Create* and Start* operations. 

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
              "Action": [
                "ec2:CreateNetworkInterface",
                "ec2:CreateNetworkInterfacePermission",
                "ec2:DeleteNetworkInterface",
                "ec2:DeleteNetworkInterfacePermission",
                "ec2:DescribeNetworkInterfaces",
                "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
                "ec2:DescribeDhcpOptions",
                "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
                "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Configure the VPC security group

With distributed jobs, you must allow communication between the different job containers in the same job. To do that, configure a rule for your security group that allows inbound connections between members of the same security group. For information, see Security Group Rules in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Connect to resources outside your VPC

If you configure your VPC so that it doesn't have internet access, jobs that use that VPC do not have access to resources outside your VPC. If your jobs need access to resources outside your VPC, provide access with one of the following options:

  • If your job needs access to an AWS service that supports interface VPC endpoints, create an endpoint to connect to that service. For a list of services that support interface endpoints, see VPC Endpoints in the Amazon VPC User Guide. For information about creating an interface VPC endpoint, see Interface VPC Endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

  • If your job needs access to an AWS service that doesn't support interface VPC endpoints or to a resource outside of AWS, create a NAT gateway and configure your security groups to allow outbound connections. For information about setting up a NAT gateway for your VPC, see Scenario 2: VPC with Public and Private Subnets (NAT) in the Amazon VPC User Guide.