implementing-aws-nitro-enclave-security

# Implementing AWS Nitro Enclave Security ## When to Use - Processing sensitive data (PII, PHI, financial records, cryptographic secrets) that must be isolated from EC2 instance operators and administrators - Building confidential computing pipelines where even root-level access on the parent instance cannot read enclave memory or state - Implementing cryptographic attestation workflows that tie KMS decryption rights to a specific, verified enclave image hash - Deploying multi-party computation environments where two or more enclaves authenticate each other via attestation before exchanging data - Hardening existing workloads that currently decrypt secrets on the parent instance by migrating decryption into an enclave boundary **Do not use** when the workload does not handle sensitive data that requires hardware-level isolation, when the instance type does not support Nitro Enclaves (requires Nitro-based instances with at least 4 vCPUs), or when latency constraints make the vsock communication overhead unacceptable. ## Prerequisites - An AWS account with permissions to launch Nitro-capable EC2 instances (m5.xlarge or larger, C5, R5, M6i families) - AWS CLI v2 and the `nitro-cli` toolset installed on the parent EC2 instance (Amazon Linux 2 or AL2023) - Docker installed on the parent instance for building enclave image files (EIF) - An AWS KMS symmetric key with key policy permissions for the enclave's IAM role - The `aws-nitro-enclaves-sdk-c` or Python `aws-encryption-sdk...