Amazon S3 security and access control best practices (STG304)

Securing Data in AWS S3

Key Takeaways

  1. S3 Bucket Security by Default:

    • S3 buckets are private by default and encrypted with AWS-managed encryption.
    • New buckets have "Block Public Access" enabled by default, preventing public access misconfigurations.
  2. IAM-based Access Control in S3:

    • IAM users, roles, and policies are used to grant/deny access to S3 objects and buckets.
    • Policies can be defined at the bucket level or attached to IAM entities.
    • Understand policy language, resource definitions, and action mappings.
  3. Sharing Data across Accounts:

    • Data can be shared between AWS accounts using IAM cross-account access policies.
    • Bucket policies in the target account must allow access from the source account.
  4. Denying Unexpected Access:

    • Use bucket policies with "Deny" statements to set up a data perimeter and block unauthorized access.
    • Leverage AWS Organizations to manage access control policies at scale.
  5. Troubleshooting and Auditing:

    • Use "Denial Source Information" to debug 403 access denied errors.
    • Leverage the S3 Access Analyzer dashboard to identify public and externally shared buckets.
    • Enable server access logs and AWS CloudTrail to audit data access.
  6. Securing Structured and Unstructured Data:

    • Differentiate between structured data (with schema) and unstructured data (file-level access).
    • Use IAM-based approaches for small to moderate scale access patterns.
    • Leverage S3 Access Points and S3 Access Grant for more scalable, user-centric access control.
    • Utilize AWS Lake Formation for fine-grained, schema-aware access control on structured data.
  7. Scalable Techniques for Data Access Management:

    • Use multiple IAM roles and policies to manage access at scale.
    • Leverage S3 Access Points to increase policy management flexibility.
    • Adopt S3 Access Grants and AWS Lake Formation for user-centric, fine-grained access control.

Overall, the presentation covers a wide range of techniques to secure data in AWS S3, from the basics of default security configurations to advanced, scalable approaches for managing access to structured and unstructured data.

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