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# How to Secure AWS RDS Access with an Identity-Aware Access Proxy

**[Teleport](https://daily.dev/sources/teleport)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A step-by-step walkthrough shows how to secure Amazon RDS access using Teleport, an identity-aware access proxy. It covers configuring AWS VPC subnets, security groups, IAM roles and policies, installing the Teleport DB agent on an EC2 instance, and connecting to a PostgreSQL RDS database via short-lived certificates and RBAC instead of static credentials. A follow-up part will add SSO authentication for RDS.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://goteleport.com/blog/how-to-secure-amazon-rds-access-with-identity-aware-access-proxy>

## Questions this post answers

### How do I set up Teleport to securely access an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL instance in a private subnet?

Launch an EC2 host to run the Teleport DB agent in the same VPC as the RDS instance, attach IAM roles with rds:DescribeDBInstances and rds-db:connect permissions, generate a join token with tctl tokens add --type=db, then run teleport db configure create with --rds-discovery set to your AWS region to auto-generate the agent config before starting it.

_See daily.dev for more walkthroughs on locking down database access with identity-aware proxies._

### How does Teleport avoid using static database passwords for RDS access?

Teleport enforces identity-based access using auto-expiring x.509 certificates instead of long-lived credentials, combined with RBAC, multi-factor authentication, and audit logging. Users log in via tsh, and Teleport issues short-lived certificates for database sessions, so administrators never need to distribute or rotate static RDS passwords.

_Developers comparing credential-based versus identity-based database access find related guides on daily.dev._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Database, Kubernetes, and SSH access without passwords](https://daily.dev/posts/database-kubernetes-and-ssh-access-without-passwords-nqazd6vpp) · Tailscale · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql), [#iam](https://daily.dev/tags/iam), [#aws-rds](https://daily.dev/tags/aws-rds)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-secure-aws-rds-access-with-an-identity-aware-access-proxy-ce5ka4ubj)

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