Investing in cloud security has never made more sense than it does in today’s environment where the ability to connect virtually, work online and quickly process and store information in a safe and secure manner is of paramount importance, according to Stephen Schmidt, Amazon Web Services’ chief information security officer.

“Many of the systems and tools that we’ve taken for granted in the pandemic might not have worked out so well as recently as five years ago, but the work that’s been done to improve cloud security has been incredible,” Schmidt said during his keynote address at AWS re:Inforce 2021.

New AWS CEO Adam Selipsky kicked off the virtual event, calling AWS security the cloud provider’s No. 1 priority.

“For us really, it’s actually called ‘job zero,’” Selipsky said. “Nothing is more important. If the right security isn’t in place for our customers, we don’t have an experience that works—we don’t have a business. This work could not be more fundamental or more mission-critical.”

With AWS, partners and customers can build on the “most secure global infrastructure,” knowing that they always own their data, including the ability to encrypt it, move it and manage retention, according to Selipsky.

“All data flowing across the AWS global network that interconnects to our data centers and our regions is automatically encrypted before it leaves our secured facilities,” he said. “We provide the broadest and the deepest security features and capabilities. And security continues to be a top area of investment for us, because that’s how critical it is both for our customers and for us. AWS is working as hard as we can to innovate quickly on security, but we still have a lot of invention in front of us.”

Here’s a look at Schmidt’s top remarks during his keynote, which covered topics including threat detection and response, ransomware, identity and access management (IAM), using “security guardians” and the general availability of AWS Backup Audit Manager, which allows users to audit and report on the compliance of their data protection policies to help meet their business and regulatory needs.