Encryption Key Management for Data Lakes

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Encryption key management is an essential aspect of securing data lakes, ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access. In cloud environments, such as AWS or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), encryption keys are managed through dedicated services like AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and Google Cloud KMS. These services offer the ability to create and control encryption keys, establish policies, and audit their usage.

Below is a Pulumi program in Python that sets up encryption key management using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for a data lake on AWS. In this example, we create a KMS key that will be used to encrypt data in an S3 data lake bucket. To accomplish this, we'll be using the `aws.kms.Key` resource from the Pulumi AWS package.

The program demonstrates how to define an encryption key and apply an IAM policy to it, so only authorized users or services can use the key. Also, we'll illustrate how to create an S3 bucket with server-side encryption enabled using this key.

Here's the complete program, which includes comments explaining each step. Please ensure that you have the Pulumi CLI installed and have your AWS credentials configured before running this program.

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_aws as aws

# Create an AWS KMS key for encrypting our data lake content.
# KMS keys are used to control the encryption of the S3 bucket where the data lake is stored.
kms_key = aws.kms.Key("my-data-lake-kms-key",
    description="KMS key to encrypt data lake content",
    policy="""{
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Sid": "Allow use of the key",
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::ACCOUNT_ID:root"},  # Replace ACCOUNT_ID with your AWS account ID.
                "Action": [
                    "kms:Encrypt",
                    "kms:Decrypt",
                    "kms:ReEncrypt*",
                    "kms:GenerateDataKey*",
                    "kms:DescribeKey"
                ],
                "Resource": "*"
            },
            {
                "Sid": "Allow attachment of persistent resources",
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::ACCOUNT_ID:root"},  # Replace ACCOUNT_ID with your AWS account ID.
                "Action": ["kms:CreateGrant"],
                "Resource": "*",
                "Condition": {
                    "Bool": {
                        "kms:GrantIsForAWSResource": "true"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }"""
)

# Create an S3 bucket with server-side encryption enabled, using the KMS key created above.
# The S3 bucket will store the data lake's files and objects.
data_lake_bucket = aws.s3.Bucket("my-data-lake-bucket",
    acl="private",
    server_side_encryption_configuration={
        "rule": {
            "applyServerSideEncryptionByDefault": {
                "sseAlgorithm": "aws:kms",
                "kmsMasterKeyId": kms_key.id,  # The KMS key ARN is used as the encryption key for S3.
            }
        }
    }
)

# Output the ARN of the KMS key and the name of the S3 bucket for reference.
pulumi.export("kms_key_arn", kms_key.arn)
pulumi.export("data_lake_bucket", data_lake_bucket.id)
```

In this program:

- We create an encryption key using the `aws.kms.Key` resource. This key is what we'll use to encrypt the contents of our S3 bucket.
- The `policy` parameter allows defining a custom policy for who can use this key. Make sure to replace `ACCOUNT_ID` with your actual AWS account ID.
- Next, we create an S3 bucket using `aws.s3.Bucket` and enable server-side encryption on it by passing the KMS key as the default encryption key within the `server_side_encryption_configuration` parameter.
- Lastly, we export the KMS key ARN and S3 bucket name as stack outputs so you can easily reference them later on.

To run this Pulumi program:

1. Save the code to a file named `__main__.py`.
2. Run `pulumi up` in the terminal in the same directory as the file.
3. Follow the on-screen prompts to create the resources.

Remember, handling encryption keys comes with the responsibility of managing access and permissions securely, and the IAM policy above should be adjusted according to your security requirements.