We all have used encrypted data in some application or other, and the biggest challenge has always been how to effectively hide the encryption key, the key with which the data is encrypted within the application or the OS using different mechanisms. In the end, there will always be a key that will be in clear text, which will unlock other keys or the encrypted data. This is just for a single application. Now imagine if you have dozens of applications running on the cloud. The challenge of key distribution and the effort to keep the key secret multiplies exponentially.

With KMS, the master key is never released, enabling you to encrypt and decrypt data. AWS Key Management Service manages the following issues:

• Encryption for all your applications: Manages encryption keys used to encrypt data stored by your applications regardless of where you store it. KMS provides an SDK for the programmatic integration of encryption and key management.
• Centralized Key Management: Provides centralized control of your encryption keys, and presents a single view of the keys' usage. Allows for the creation of keys, implements key rotation, creates usage policies, and enables logging.
• Integrated with AWS services: Integrated with other AWS services such as S3, Redshift, EBS, and RDS to make it easy to encrypt stored data.
• Built-in auditing: Logs all API calls to KMS or AWS CloudTrail. Helps to meet compliance and regulatory requirements by providing details of when keys were accessed and who accessed them. A log file is delivered to your specified S3 bucket.
• Fully managed: It is a fully managed service; AWS handles the availability, physical security, and hardware maintenance of the underlying infrastructure.
• Low cost: Low costs based on usage.

Let’s get started and create a master key, and then use it to encrypt and decrypt data.