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Enabling and disabling keys - AWS Key Management Service
Enabling and disabling KMS keys (console)Enabling and disabling KMS keys (AWS KMS API)

Enabling and disabling keys

You can disable and re-enable the AWS KMS keys that you manage. You cannot enable or disable AWS managed keys.

When you create a KMS key, it is enabled by default. If you disable a KMS key, it cannot be used to encrypt or decrypt data until you re-enable it. AWS managed keys are permanently enabled for use by services that use AWS KMS. You cannot disable them.

You can also delete KMS keys. For more information, see Deleting AWS KMS keys.

Note

AWS KMS does not rotate the key material of customer managed keys while they are disabled. For more information, see How automatic key rotation works.

Enabling and disabling KMS keys (console)

You can use the AWS KMS console to enable and disable customer managed keys.

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/kms.

  2. To change the AWS Region, use the Region selector in the upper-right corner of the page.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Customer managed keys.

  4. Select the check box for the KMS keys that you want to enable or disable.

  5. To enable a KMS key, choose Key actions, Enable. To disable a KMS key, choose Key actions, Disable.

Enabling and disabling KMS keys (AWS KMS API)

The EnableKey operation enables a disabled AWS KMS key. These examples use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), but you can use any supported programming language. The key-id parameter is required.

This operation does not return any output. To see the key status, use the DescribeKey operation.

$ aws kms enable-key --key-id 1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab

The DisableKey operation disables an enabled KMS key. The key-id parameter is required.

$ aws kms disable-key --key-id 1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab

This operation does not return any output. To see the key status, use the DescribeKey operation, and see the Enabled field.

$ aws kms describe-key --key-id 1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab
{
    "KeyMetadata": {
        "Origin": "AWS_KMS",
        "KeyId": "1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
        "Description": "",
        "KeyManager": "CUSTOMER",
        "MultiRegion": false,
        "Enabled": false,
        "KeyState": "Disabled",
        "KeyUsage": "ENCRYPT_DECRYPT",        
        "CreationDate": 1502910355.475,
        "Arn": "arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
        "AWSAccountId": "111122223333"
        "KeySpec": "SYMMETRIC_DEFAULT",
        "CustomerMasterKeySpec": "SYMMETRIC_DEFAULT",
        "EncryptionAlgorithms": [
            "SYMMETRIC_DEFAULT"
        ]
    }
}