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Encryption at Rest using Customer Key Management

On this page

  • Required Access
  • Configure Atlas with Customer Key Management
  • Allow Access From the Atlas Control Plane
  • Enable Customer Key Management for an Atlas Cluster
  • Add Nodes to an Encrypted Atlas Cluster
  • Validate your KMS Configuration
  • Restore a Deleted Key
  • Encrypted Backups

Important

Feature unavailable in Serverless Instances

Serverless instances don't support this feature at this time. To learn more, see Serverless Instance Limitations.

Atlas encrypts all cluster storage and snapshot volumes at rest by default. You can add another layer of security by using your cloud provider's KMS together with the MongoDB encrypted storage engine.

Configuring Encryption at Rest using your Key Management incurs additional charges for the Atlas project. To learn more, see Advanced Security.

You can use one or more of the following customer key management providers when configuring Encryption at Rest for the Atlas project:

After configuring at least one key management provider for the Atlas project, you can enable customer key management for each Atlas cluster for which they require encryption. The key management provider does not have to match the cluster cloud service provider.

Note

When you enable or disable customer key management, Atlas performs an initial sync to re-encrypt your cluster data.

Alternatively, for projects with M10 or higher Atlas clusters deployed on only Azure regions, you can use the Atlas Administration API to automatically create Azure Private Link in your AKV that enables Atlas to securely communicate with your AKV over Azure's private network interfaces. To learn more, see Manage Customer Keys with Azure Key Vault.

Atlas cannot rotate customer-managed encryption keys. Refer to your key management provider's documentation for guidance on key rotation. When you set customer key management in a project, Atlas creates a 90-day key rotation alert.

If your KMS provider becomes unavailable, this doesn't disable your cluster while it still runs. If you decide to restart your cluster, the lack of a KMS provider disables your cluster.

To configure customer key management, you must have Project Owner access to the project.

Users with Organization Owner access must add themselves to the project as a Project Owner.

Encryption at Rest using Key Management requires valid key management provider credentials and an encryption key. To provide these details and enable Customer Key Management:

1
  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Advanced under the Security heading.

    The Advanced page displays.

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3
4
5

To learn more, see Allow Access From the Atlas Control Plane.

Optional.

Depending on your Key Management Service configuration, you might have to add Atlas control plane IP addresses to enable Encryption at Rest for your project so that Atlas can communicate with your KMS.

To enable communication between Atlas and KMS:

1

The API endpoint returns a list of inbound and outbound Atlas control plane IP addresses in CIDR categorized by cloud provider and region. To learn more, see the prerequisites for managing customer keys with AWS, Azure, and GCP.

2

See the prerequisites for managing customer keys with AWS, Azure, and GCP for more information.

After you Configure Atlas with Customer Key Management, you must enable customer key management for each Atlas cluster that contains data that you want to encrypt.

Note

You must have the Project Owner role to enable customer key management for clusters in that project.

For new clusters:

1

Toggle the Manage your own encryption keys setting to Yes on the cluster configuration form.

2
  1. Click Review Changes.

  2. Review your changes, then click Apply Changes to deploy your cluster.

3

Depending on your Key Management configuration, you may have to add Atlas cluster node IP addresses to your cloud provider KMS access list, so that the cluster can communicate with your KMS. To enable communication between the cluster and KMS:

  1. Send a GET request to the ipAddresses endpoint. The API endpoint returns a list of IP addresses from the new cluster nodes, similar to the following:

    {
    "groupId": "xxx", // ObjectId
    "services": {
    "clusters": [
    {
    "clusterName": "Cluster0",
    "inbound": [
    "3.92.113.229",
    "3.208.110.31",
    "107.22.44.69"
    ],
    "outbound": [
    "3.92.113.229",
    "3.208.110.31",
    "107.22.44.69"
    ]
    }
    ]
    }
    }
  2. Add the returned IP addresses to your cloud provider's IP access list. You must modify your IP access list before the provisioning plan rolls back. The cluster attempts provisioning for up to three days before the provisioning plan rolls back from IP access restrictions.

    See the prerequisites for managing customer keys with AWS, Azure, and GCP for more information.

    Note

    If you need more time to update the IP access list, you can:

    • Provision the cluster without Encryption at Rest then enable it after you update the IP access list.

    • Configure a more inclusive IP access list on your cloud provider's Key Management Service, launch the cluster with Encryption at Rest, then modify the IP access list.

For existing clusters:

1
  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. If it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.

    The Clusters page displays.

2

For the cluster that contains data that you want to encrypt, click the , then select Edit Configuration.

3
  1. Expand the Additional Settings panel.

  2. Toggle the Manage your own encryption keys setting to Yes.

  3. Verify the status of the Require Private Networking setting for your cluster.

    If you configured Encryption at Rest Using CMK (Over Private Networking) for Atlas at the project level, the status is Active. If you haven't configured any private endpoint connection for your project, the status is Inactive.

4
  1. Click Review Changes.

  2. Review your changes, then click Apply Changes to update your cluster.

1

You can add electable nodes to M10+ clusters or increase the number of shards in your sharded cluster.

2

Depending on your Key Management configuration, you may have to add Atlas cluster node IP addresses to your cloud provider KMS access list, so that the cluster can communicate with your KMS. To enable communication between the cluster and KMS:

  1. Send a GET request to the ipAddresses endpoint. The API endpoint returns a list of IP addresses from the new cluster nodes or shards, similar to the following:

    {
    "groupId": "xxx", // ObjectId
    "services": {
    "clusters": [
    {
    "clusterName": "Cluster0",
    "inbound": [
    "3.92.113.229",
    "3.208.110.31",
    "107.22.44.69"
    ], // List<String>
    "outbound": [
    "3.92.113.229",
    "3.208.110.31",
    "107.22.44.69"
    ]
    }
    ]
    }
    }
  2. Add the returned IP addresses to your cloud provider's IP access list. You must modify your IP access list before the provisioning plan rolls back. The cluster attempts provisioning for up to three days before the provisioning plan rolls back from IP access restrictions.

    See the prerequisites for managing customer keys with AWS, Azure, and GCP for more information.

Atlas validates your KMS configuration:

Atlas shuts down all mongod and mongos processes on the next scheduled validity check if one of the following conditions exist:

  • your key management provider credentials become invalid

  • someone deletes or disables your encryption key

If Atlas can't connect to your key management provider, Atlas doesn't shut down your processes. The Encryption at Rest KMS network access denied alert is enabled by default for all new projects to communicate any KMS network access failures. You can configure your alert settings.

If Atlas shuts down your clusters, the following events occur:

  • Atlas sends an email to the Project Owner listing all affected clusters.

  • The Clusters page reflects that Atlas disabled your clusters due to invalid Encryption at Rest settings.

You can't read or write data on disabled clusters. You can submit updates to disabled clusters, such as disk and instance size changes. Atlas processes these changes once someone restores your encryption key. Atlas continues to perform maintenance and apply security patches. Disabled clusters retain all your data, so billing continues.

Note

Virtual Machine Power

While a cluster is disabled, Atlas doesn't stop the Virtual Machine (VM) the cluster is running on. Atlas may perform patches that reboot the server, but VM power is not cycled.

To regain access to your data:

The Try Again button is to the right of the Customer Master Key ID field in Atlas Advanced Security settings
click to enlarge

After updating your configuration, click Try Again to validate it. If you don't, Atlas validates on its next scheduled check. All mongod and mongos processes restart after Atlas determines your configuration to be valid.

Warning

If your key was deleted, restore that key to regain access to your clusters. You cannot change a key or disable Encryption at Rest using Customer Key Management without a valid key.

To restore a deleted key, see your key management provider's documentation:

Atlas encrypts all snapshot volumes. This secures your cluster data on disk. Using your cloud provider's KMS, you can:

  • Encrypt your snapshot storage volumes where you store your backups.

  • Encrypt the data files in your snapshots.

  • Access encrypted snapshots. To learn more, see Access an Encrypted Snapshot.

  • Restore snapshots with the key that was active at the time the snapshot was taken.

  • Encrypt PIT restore oplog data.

You cannot restore snapshots encrypted with keys that have become invalid.

You can specify a base snapshot schedule that backs up every 6 hours.

To learn more about customer key management and Cloud Backups, see:

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