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Enable Default Encryption For EBS Volumes

More Info:​

Ensure EBS volumes are encrypted by default in AWS Account

Risk Level​

High

Address​

Security

Compliance Standards​

  • APRA CPS 234 (Australia)
  • AWS Startup Security Baseline
  • AWS Well Architected Framework
  • BSI C5 (Germany)
  • Brazil LGPD
  • CCPA / CPRA (California)
  • CIS AWS
  • CIS Critical Security Controls v8
  • CMMC 2.0
  • CSA Cloud Controls Matrix v4
  • Cloudanix Best Practice
  • DPDPA
  • Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU)
  • GDPR
  • HITRUST CSF
  • ISO/IEC 27017
  • ISO/IEC 27018
  • ISO/IEC 27701
  • KSA PDPL
  • MAS Technology Risk Management (Singapore)
  • MITRE ATT&CK (Cloud)
  • NIS2 Directive
  • NIST SP 800-171
  • NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500
  • PCI
  • Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Cyber Security Framework
  • SOC2
  • SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework
  • Sarbanes-Oxley IT General Controls
  • Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) - Cloud Security Adoption Framework
  • UK NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework

Triage and Remediation​

Remediation​

Using Console

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. From the navigation bar, select the Region.

  3. From the navigation pane, select EC2 Dashboard.

  4. In the upper-right corner of the page, choose Account Attributes, Data protection and security.

  5. Choose Manage.

  6. Select Enable. You keep the AWS managed key with the alias alias/aws/ebs created on your behalf as the default encryption key, or choose a symmetric customer managed encryption key.

  7. Choose Update EBS encryption.

Using CLI
  1. To view the encryption by default setting a. For a specific Region 
    $ aws ec2 get-ebs-encryption-by-default --region region
    b.For all Regions in your account 
    $ for region in $(aws ec2 describe-regions --region us-east-1 --query "Regions[*].[RegionName]" --output text); do   default=$(aws ec2 get-ebs-encryption-by-default --region $region --query "{Encryption_By_Default:EbsEncryptionByDefault}" --output text); kms_key=$(aws ec2 get-ebs-default-kms-key-id --region $region | jq '.KmsKeyId'); echo "$region  --- $default  --- $kms_key"; done
  2. To enable encryption by default a. For a specific Region 
    $ aws ec2 enable-ebs-encryption-by-default --region region
    b. For all Regions in your account 
    $ for region in $(aws ec2 describe-regions --region us-east-1 --query "Regions[*].[RegionName]" --output text); do   default=$(aws ec2 enable-ebs-encryption-by-default --region $region --query "{Encryption_By_Default:EbsEncryptionByDefault}" --output text); kms_key=$(aws ec2 get-ebs-default-kms-key-id --region $region | jq '.KmsKeyId'); echo "$region  --- $default  --- $kms_key"; done
Using Python

To enable encryption by default for a region using Python, you can use the boto3 library to interact with AWS resources. Here's a Python script equivalent to the steps mentioned:

import boto3

def enable_default_encryption(region):
    ec2 = boto3.client('ec2', region_name=region)
    response = ec2.enable_ebs_encryption_by_default()

    # Check if default encryption is successfully enabled
    if response['EbsEncryptionByDefault']:
        print("Default EBS encryption enabled successfully for region:", region)
    else:
        print("Failed to enable default EBS encryption for region:", region)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Specify the region where you want to enable default encryption
    region = 'your-region'  # Replace 'your-region' with your desired AWS region
    enable_default_encryption(region)

Replace 'your-region' with the AWS region where you want to enable default encryption. You can find a list of AWS region codes here.

Make sure you have appropriate AWS credentials configured either through environment variables, AWS CLI configuration, or IAM roles assigned to your EC2 instance if you're running this script on an EC2 instance.

Using Terraform
# Provider must be configured per region where you want EBS encryption by default
provider "aws" {
  region = "AWS_REGION_HERE" # e.g. "us-east-1"
}

# Enable EBS encryption by default in this AWS region
resource "aws_ebs_encryption_by_default" "this" {
  enabled = true
}

This mirrors aws ec2 enable-ebs-encryption-by-default for the configured region: it is regional, only affects new volumes and snapshots, and does not retroactively encrypt existing volumes (which must be handled manually as described in the warning).

terraform plan should show creation or update of aws_ebs_encryption_by_default.this with enabled changing to true.