2

I need to set up a repository where multiple people can go to drop off excel and csv files. I need a secure environment that has access control so customers logging on to drop off their own data can't see another customers data. So if person A logs on to drop a word document they can't see person B's excel sheet. I have an AWS account and would prefer to use S3 for this. I originally planned to setup an SFTP server on an EC2 server however, I feel that using S3 would be more scalable and safer after doing some research. However, I've never used S3 before nor have I seen it in a production environment. So my question really comes down to this does S3 provide a user interface that allows multiple people to drop files off similar to that of an FTP server? And can I create access control so people can't see other peoples data?

Anders
  • 253
  • 4
  • 15
  • dang good question. btw what are your strong programming languages such as java sdk or .net sdk? or any other? cuz ya need some sorta front end so you know what s3 bucket to browse for that user, say John or Jane (at least i think you do). i don't know of any pre-built thing offered by them – Drew Jun 25 '15 at 19:42
  • there has got to be some sort of $10 widget out there on say codecanyon.net – Drew Jun 25 '15 at 19:45
  • possible duplicate of [FTP/SFTP access to an Amazon S3 Bucket](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23939179/ftp-sftp-access-to-an-amazon-s3-bucket) – Michael - sqlbot Jun 25 '15 at 23:58
  • There is no built-in interface to S3 that doesn't require some code to be written, but I (and presumably several others judging by the votes) have successfully used s3fs and proftpd to create an S3-backed ftp/sftp/ftps server: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23939179/ftp-sftp-access-to-an-amazon-s3-bucket/23946418#23946418 – Michael - sqlbot Jun 26 '15 at 00:00

2 Answers2

1

Yes. It does, you can actually control access to your resources using IAM users and roles.

http://aws.amazon.com/iam/

You can allow privileges to parts of an S3 bucket say depending on the user or role for example:

mybucket/user1
mybucket/user2
mybucket/development

could all have different permissions.

Hope this helps.

Rico
  • 58,485
  • 12
  • 111
  • 141
  • I know this essentially asking for your opinion which doesn't always seem like best practice on stack. But could using S3 be a viable alternative to using an SFTP server on an EC2 server? Thank you – Anders Jun 25 '15 at 19:50
  • @GittingsBoyce sure, it's very reliable, can provide user level access control. It may not be the highest performance, if you are looking for better performance, you are better off with SFTP on EC2 with an actual disk drive . Something like EFS is a good alternative when it becomes widely available too: http://aws.amazon.com/efs/ – Rico Jun 25 '15 at 19:57
1

Here are the developer resources for S3

https://aws.amazon.com/developertools/Amazon-S3

Here are some pre-built widgets

http://codecanyon.net/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=s3+bucket

Let us know your angle as we can provide other ideas knowing more about your requirements

Drew
  • 24,851
  • 10
  • 43
  • 78
  • I believe the Amazon S3 Manager in coedcanyon would be great but there is a high importance on security in my project. I can't find too much about security however on the website. Do you know how secure some of these widgets are if at all possible support file encryption? Thank you – Anders Jun 26 '15 at 12:39
  • They are all source code rendered. So the code is your to tweak. Did I answer your question or not that you were asking? – Drew Jun 27 '15 at 23:19