AWS CLI Command Reference

[ aws ]

kms

Description

Key Management Service (KMS) is an encryption and key management web service. This guide describes the KMS operations that you can call programmatically. For general information about KMS, see the ` Key Management Service Developer Guide https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/`__ .

Note

KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with KMS key and KMS key . The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, KMS is keeping some variations of this term.

Amazon Web Services provides SDKs that consist of libraries and sample code for various programming languages and platforms (Java, Ruby, .Net, macOS, Android, etc.). The SDKs provide a convenient way to create programmatic access to KMS and other Amazon Web Services services. For example, the SDKs take care of tasks such as signing requests (see below), managing errors, and retrying requests automatically. For more information about the Amazon Web Services SDKs, including how to download and install them, see Tools for Amazon Web Services .

We recommend that you use the Amazon Web Services SDKs to make programmatic API calls to KMS.

If you need to use FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules when communicating with Amazon Web Services, use the FIPS endpoint in your preferred Amazon Web Services Region. For more information about the available FIPS endpoints, see Service endpoints in the Key Management Service topic of the Amazon Web Services General Reference .

All KMS API calls must be signed and be transmitted using Transport Layer Security (TLS). KMS recommends you always use the latest supported TLS version. Clients must also support cipher suites with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) such as Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman (DHE) or Elliptic Curve Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman (ECDHE). Most modern systems such as Java 7 and later support these modes.

Signing Requests

Requests must be signed by using an access key ID and a secret access key. We strongly recommend that you do not use your Amazon Web Services account (root) access key ID and secret key for everyday work with KMS. Instead, use the access key ID and secret access key for an IAM user. You can also use the Amazon Web Services Security Token Service to generate temporary security credentials that you can use to sign requests.

All KMS operations require Signature Version 4 .

Logging API Requests

KMS supports CloudTrail, a service that logs Amazon Web Services API calls and related events for your Amazon Web Services account and delivers them to an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. By using the information collected by CloudTrail, you can determine what requests were made to KMS, who made the request, when it was made, and so on. To learn more about CloudTrail, including how to turn it on and find your log files, see the CloudTrail User Guide .

Additional Resources

For more information about credentials and request signing, see the following:

Commonly Used API Operations

Of the API operations discussed in this guide, the following will prove the most useful for most applications. You will likely perform operations other than these, such as creating keys and assigning policies, by using the console.

  • Encrypt

  • Decrypt

  • GenerateDataKey

  • GenerateDataKeyWithoutPlaintext

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