Data is the new gold in the modern digital age, and organizations are becoming more and more dependent on it to run their operations. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was designed to protect the privacy and personal data of EU citizens and includes robust requirements that raise and harmonize standards for data protection, security, and compliance.
It requires businesses to follow a set of strict rules and presents a challenge for IT companies, particularly those that host their services on cloud infrastructure.
If your company operates in the EU, you need to ensure that you are compliant with this law. EU supervisory authorities can issue fines of up to EUR 20 million, or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher, for a breach of the GDPR.
So, in this article, we’ll discuss some best practices for building a GDPR-compliant architecture on AWS — Amazon Web Services.
Data Classification
The first step to building a GDPR-compliant architecture is to classify your data. You need to understand what data you have, where it is located, and how it is processed. This is critical because GDPR applies to personal data, which is defined as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. You need to identify all the personal data you process and store and determine the level of sensitivity for each type of data. Once you have classified your data, you can implement appropriate measures to protect it.
Data Encryption
Encryption is one of the most effective ways to protect personal data. AWS provides a range of encryption services that you can use to protect your data at rest and in transit. Amazon S3, for example, allows you to encrypt your data using server-side encryption (SSE) with AWS-managed keys or customer-managed keys. AWS Key Management Service (KMS) allows you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data. You can also use AWS Certificate Manager to manage SSL/TLS certificates for secure communication.
Access Controls
You need to implement strong access controls to ensure that only authorized personnel can access personal data. AWS provides several access control mechanisms that you can use to enforce granular access policies. IAM (Identity and Access Management) allows you to manage users and their permissions. You can use IAM roles to grant temporary permissions to applications running on EC2 instances. You can also use Amazon Cognito to manage user authentication and authorization.
Data Protection
In addition to encryption and access controls, you need to implement other measures to protect personal data. You should use AWS CloudTrail to monitor all API calls made to your AWS account. CloudTrail provides a complete audit trail of all activities and can help you identify any suspicious behaviour. You can also use AWS Config to assess the compliance of your AWS resources against your desired configurations. AWS GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors malicious activity and unauthorized behaviour.
Incident Response
Despite your best efforts, a data breach can still occur. That’s why you need to have an incident response plan in place. Your incident response plan should outline the steps you will take in the event of a data breach. AWS provides several services that can help you prepare for and respond to security incidents. Amazon Inspector can help you identify security vulnerabilities in your EC2 instances, while AWS Config Rules can automatically remediate noncompliant resources. You can also use AWS Security Hub to aggregate and prioritize security alerts from multiple AWS services.
Conclusion
Building a GDPR-compliant architecture on AWS requires a combination of technical and organizational measures. Based on the valuable experience of our ZenBit Tech team you can get our help in implementing strong access controls, encrypting personal data, and continuously monitoring for security threats.
Yes, AWS provides a range of services that can help you achieve compliance, but we can guarantee to ensure that your architecture is designed and operated in a compliant manner.
What is Amazon AWS?The AWS service is provided by the Amazon that uses distributed IT infrastructure to provide different IT resources available on demand.
It provides different services such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS).What is AWS and how does it work?What is AWS (Amazon Web Services) and How Does it Work?
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that includes a mixture of infrastructure as a service ( IaaS ), platform as a service ( PaaS) and packaged software as a service ( SaaS) offerings.What is AWS cloud computing?Cloud computing with AWS.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 165 fully featured services from data centers globally.AWS training in chennaiAWS certification in chennaiAWS course in chennaiAWS coaching centre in chennai
Best Cloud Computing Course/Training/Certification/Institute Online Class In Trichy AWS, Azure 100% Pass Job support
The dawn of cloud computing has proven to be an essential event in this digital era.
Having an on-site data centre is not a necessity now.
It has led to substantial cost savings and improved agility for organizations.A new model of business has emerged called the Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model.
Here a third-party service provider takes care of providing hosting, maintaining core infrastructure which includes hardware, software, storage and servers for the customer.The choice of the ideal IaaS provider really depends on your needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution here.
Both the solutions are offered by world-renowned companies who provide a high-level of security, free look-in services for you to try, excellent support and pay-as-you-use pricing.
AWS will suit your company if you want to go with a company which has the highest experience with cloud.
