🔐 AWS Elastic Beanstalk Now Supports Custom Security Group Configuration

AWS continues to enhance developer flexibility and security! Elastic Beanstalk now gives users full control over security group configuration during application deployment—bringing a long-awaited feature to the platform.

🚀 What’s New?

With this update, you can now choose to use custom security groups instead of relying on the default ones provided by Elastic Beanstalk. This change applies to:

• EC2 instances in all environment types
• Load balancers in load-balanced environments

Previously, Beanstalk would automatically attach a default security group, which often required manual updates post-deployment. Now, you can define custom security policies from the start—no more post-deploy patchwork.

🔒 Why This Matters

This update significantly improves:

• Security posture: Apply your organization’s security policies right from deployment.
• Network control: Fine-tune which resources can communicate with your app.
• Consistency: Align Beanstalk deployments with your existing VPC security configurations.

Whether you're deploying internal apps, staging environments, or internet-facing workloads, this feature provides greater transparency and security control.

🛠️ How to Use It

When launching or updating an environment, you can now:

• Specify custom security groups in your Elastic Beanstalk configuration (via console, CLI, or config files).
• Skip the default security group by opting out during setup.
• Apply this to both new and existing environments.

✅ Use Case Example

Let’s say your company uses strict ingress rules and IAM-bound VPC security groups for internal APIs. With this new feature:

• You can deploy Elastic Beanstalk environments that conform to those policies.
• Avoid manually removing default groups or editing rules post-deployment.
• Automate deployment securely via Infrastructure-as-Code tools.

💬 Final Thoughts

This may seem like a small change—but for DevOps teams and cloud architects, it’s a huge win for security and automation. It also brings Elastic Beanstalk more in line with other AWS services that already support fine-grained security group configuration.

Are you still using Elastic Beanstalk in 2025? Will this change impact your deployment workflows?