Schedule key deletion - AWS Key Management Service

Schedule key deletion

The following procedures describe how to schedule key deletion and cancel key deletion of AWS KMS keys (KMS keys) in AWS KMS using the AWS Management Console and the AWS KMS API.

Warning

Deleting a KMS key is destructive and potentially dangerous. You should proceed only when you are sure that you don't need to use the KMS key anymore and won't need to use it in the future. If you are not sure, you should disable the KMS key instead of deleting it.

Before you can delete a KMS key, you must have permission to do so. For information about giving these permissions to key administrators, see Control access to key deletion. You can also use the kms:ScheduleKeyDeletionPendingWindowInDays condition key to further constrain the waiting period, such as enforcing a minimum waiting period.

AWS KMS records an entry in your AWS CloudTrail log when you schedule deletion of the KMS key and when the KMS key is actually deleted.

In the AWS Management Console, you can schedule and cancel the deletion of multiple KMS keys at one time.

To schedule key deletion

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/kms.

  2. To change the AWS Region, use the Region selector in the upper-right corner of the page.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Customer managed keys.

    You cannot schedule the deletion of AWS managed keys or AWS owned keys.

  4. Choose the check box next to the KMS key that you want to delete.

  5. Choose Key actions, Schedule key deletion.

  6. Read and consider the warning, and the information about canceling the deletion during the waiting period. If you decide to cancel the deletion, at the bottom of the page, choose Cancel.

  7. For Waiting period (in days), enter a number of days between 7 and 30.

  8. Review the KMS keys that you are deleting.

  9. Choose the check box next to Confirm you want to schedule this key for deletion in <number of days> days..

  10. Choose Schedule deletion.

The KMS key status changes to Pending deletion.

Use the aws kms schedule-key-deletion command to schedule key deletion of a customer managed key, as shown in the following example.

You cannot schedule the deletion of an AWS managed key or AWS owned key.

$ aws kms schedule-key-deletion --key-id 1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab --pending-window-in-days 10

When used successfully, the AWS CLI returns output like the output shown in the following example:

{
    "KeyId": "arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
    "DeletionDate": 1598304792.0,
    "KeyState": "PendingDeletion",
    "PendingWindowInDays": 10
}