AWS › AWS KMS & Data Encryption

How can KMS multi region keys support encryption and decryption of the same data across multiple AWS regions without needing to re encrypt data during a cross region transfer?

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Answer

KMS multi region keys let you create a primary key in one region and replicate it as related keys in other regions, sharing the same underlying key material, meaning data encrypted with the primary key in one region can be decrypted directly using the replica key in another region without requiring you to decrypt and re encrypt the data during a cross region migration or in a multi region disaster recovery scenario.
aws kms replicate-key --key-id abc123 --replica-region eu-west-1
Real-world example A company running a multi region disaster recovery setup uses KMS multi region keys so that encrypted database backups replicated from its primary region to a secondary region can be decrypted immediately during a failover, without any complex re encryption process.

Common follow-ups: What happens if you need to rotate a multi region key, does it rotate consistently across all regions?;Are there any actions that cannot be performed on a replica key compared to the primary key?