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Every LocalOps environment comes with security controls built in from the moment it is created. There is no additional configuration needed to enable these controls — they are part of the default environment setup.

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Encryption at rest

All data stored within an environment is encrypted at rest using cloud-native encryption mechanisms. On AWS, every EBS (Elastic Block Store) volume attached to compute instances in the environment is encrypted by default. This includes volumes attached to Kubernetes nodes, database instances, and any dynamically provisioned persistent volumes. Encryption is handled using AWS-managed keys (SSE-EBS), ensuring that all data written to disk is automatically encrypted before storage and decrypted when read by an authorized instance. This applies to:
  • EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances running your Kubernetes workloads
  • EBS volumes backing persistent volume claims (PVCs) in Kubernetes
  • Volumes attached to managed database instances (e.g., RDS)
No application-level changes are needed. Encryption is transparent to your services and has no impact on performance.

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Encryption in transit

All traffic entering the environment from the internet is encrypted in transit using TLS. LocalOps automatically generates and manages SSL/TLS certificates for every environment. When a service is exposed via a load balancer, a valid SSL certificate is provisioned and attached automatically. This ensures that all HTTP traffic entering the environment is encrypted over HTTPS without any manual certificate management. This covers:
  • External traffic: All inbound traffic from the internet to your services is terminated at the load balancer with a valid TLS certificate
  • Certificate lifecycle: Certificates are auto-generated and auto-renewed, eliminating the risk of expired certificates causing outages
  • Custom domains: When you attach a custom domain to a service, LocalOps provisions a certificate for that domain automatically

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Keyless role-based access to cloud resources

Services running in a LocalOps environment access cloud resources (such as S3 buckets, SQS queues, or RDS databases) using pre-configured IAM roles — not static access keys. LocalOps sets up IAM roles scoped to each environment and associates them with your workloads using cloud-native identity mechanisms (e.g., IAM Roles for Service Accounts on AWS EKS). This means:
  • No static credentials: Your services never need AWS access keys or secret keys. There are no long-lived credentials to rotate, leak, or manage.
  • Automatic credential injection: The cloud provider’s SDK automatically picks up temporary credentials from the environment. No configuration is needed in your application code.
  • Least-privilege scoping: IAM roles are scoped to only the cloud resources declared in your environment. A service can only access the resources it is supposed to.
This approach follows the principle of keyless authentication — your services prove their identity through the infrastructure they run on, not through secrets they carry.

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Network isolation with private and public subnets

Every environment is provisioned with a dedicated VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) that is divided into private and public subnets. Services are hosted in private subnets by default, meaning they have no public IP address and are not directly reachable from the internet. Private subnets host:
  • Kubernetes nodes running your application workloads
  • Managed databases and caches (e.g., RDS, ElastiCache)
  • Internal services that do not need to be publicly accessible
Public subnets host:
  • Load balancers that receive inbound traffic from the internet
  • NAT gateways that allow private subnet resources to make outbound connections
  • Internet gateways
A service is only exposed to the internet when you explicitly configure it as a web service with a load balancer. All other services, including internal services, workers, and cron jobs, remain private and unreachable from outside the VPC. This default-private architecture ensures that your attack surface is minimized. Only the services you choose to expose are accessible, and all exposure happens through a managed load balancer with TLS termination.
These security controls apply to every environment regardless of the deployment mode — whether it is a production environment, a staging environment, or an ephemeral PR preview environment. For more details on the shared responsibility model, see Shared responsibilities.