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Description

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) supports encryption at rest when using the Elastic Block Store (EBS) service. While disabled by default, forcing encryption at EBS volume creation is supported.

Rationale​

Encrypting data at rest reduces the likelihood that it is unintentionally exposed and can nullify the impact of disclosure if the encryption remains unbroken.

Impact​

Losing access or removing the KMS key in use by the EBS volumes will result in no longer being able to access the volumes.

Audit​

From Console​

  1. Login to AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console using https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
  2. Under Account attributes, click EBS encryption.
  3. Verify Always encrypt new EBS volumes displays Enabled.
  4. Review every region in-use.

Note: EBS volume encryption is configured per region.

From Command Line​

  1. Run:
aws --region <region> ec2 get-ebs-encryption-by-default
  1. Verify that "EbsEncryptionByDefault": true is displayed.
  2. Review every region in-use.

Note: EBS volume encryption is configured per region.

References​

  1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSEncryption.html
  2. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-opt-in-to-default-encryption-for-new-ebs-volumes/

Additional Information​

Default EBS volume encryption only applies to newly created EBS volumes. Existing EBS volumes are not converted automatically.