In this AWS article, we will discuss the key differences between AWS NACL and AWS Security Group
AWS NACL vs Security Group
Below is a tabular comparison between AWS NACL and AWS Security Group.
| AWS NACL | Security Group |
| Network Access Control List associated closely with Subnets in AWS. | Associated with EC2 instance in AWS. No Subnet involved here. |
| Acts as a firewall for the subnet. | Security Group acts as a firewall for the EC2 instance. |
| AWS NACL is stateless in nature Meaning if you will do any changes to the incoming rule, it won’t apply to the outgoing rule. | Whereas, AWS Security Group is Stateful in nature. Meaning if you will do any changes to the incoming rule, it will apply to the outgoing rule automatically. |
| In terms of security, you can call it as the second layer of defense. | In terms of security, you can call it as the first layer of defense. |
| AWS NACL supports both allow and deny rules. To make it clear, you can able to deny any specific IP address from establishing a connection. | Security Group supports only allow rules. To make it clear, it is not possible to deny an IP address from establishing any connection. Another point to mention here is all the rules are denied here by default. |
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Conclusion
In this AWS article, we discussed, AWS NACL vs Security Group, and the key differences between them. Thanks for reading this quick article !!!