Securing Key Pairs for EC2 Instances
The more customizable your service or platform, the more responsibilities you hold as the customer. With the EC2 service, you can create a set of encryption keys that will allow secure access to your EC2 instances.
Creating and Securing EC2 Key Pairs
As part of the process for creating an EC2 instance, you are asked to create a new key pair or select an existing one. This section will discuss the importance of these key pairs and how you can manage them.
Key pairs allow you to connect to your instance, whether it’s Linux-based or Windows-based. The methods for connecting to each of these operating systems with key pairs differ, and you will review the different techniques shortly.
Each key pair uses public key cryptography using 2,048-bit SSH-2 RSA keys and is used to encrypt and decrypt administrative logs on credentials for that instance. It is worth noting, however, that key pairs, once created, are not tied down to a specific...