Manage Sensitive Data In Application Code | 🏗️ Build A Secure Configuration Service
Exam Guide: Developer - Associate 🏗️ Domain 2: Security 📘 Task 3: Manage Sensitive Data In Application Code Managing Sensitive Data In Application Code is about keeping secrets out of your code, classifying data properly, and building applications that handle sensitive data safely. You need to know when to use Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store, how to mask PII in API responses and logs, and how to isolate data in multi-tenant applications. The ability to choose the right secret management service, implement data sanitization, and enforce tenant-level data boundaries, is vital. 📘Concepts Data Classification Understand data sensitivity levels and how each should be handled: Classification Examples Handling Requirements PII (Personally Identifiable Information) Name, email, SSN, phone number, address Encrypt at rest and in transit, mask in logs and API responses, restrict access PHI (Protected Health Information) Medical records, insurance IDs, lab results HIPAA compliance, encryption required, audit trail mandatory Financial Credit card numbers, bank accounts, transaction data PCI DSS compliance, tokenization, never store full card numbers Public Marketing content, public API docs No special handling needed 💡 If a scenario mentions compliance or audit trail , think encryption with KMS (for CloudTrail logging) and Secrets Manager (for automatic rotation). If it mentions PII in logs , think data masking and sanitization. Secrets Manager vs SSM Parameter Store Both store configuration and secrets. Feature Secrets Manager SSM Parameter Store Automatic rotation Yes (built-in for RDS, Redshift, DocumentDB) No (you build it yourself with Lambda) Cost $0.40/secret/month + $0.05 per 10,000 API calls Free (Standard tier), $0.05/advanced parameter/month Cross-account access Yes (via resource policy) Yes (advanced parameters only) Max size 64 KB 4 KB (Standard) / 8 KB (Advanced) Versioning Automatic (AWSCURRENT, AWSPREVIOUS labels) Yes (version history) Encryption Always encrypt