# EKS control plane and data plane
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Amazon EKS operates a control plane that handles the AWS API calls responsible for high-level cluster management (such as `eks:CreateCluster` and `eks:UpdateClusterConfig`). That control plane is not covered in detail in this document; instead, this document focuses on the cluster-specific Kubernetes control plane and data plane. For information about securing the AWS APIs for cluster management, see the [Security best practices in IAM](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html) guide.

![](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/security-overview-amazon-eks-auto-mode/images/image3.png)


**Topics**
+ [Amazon EKS control plane](amazon-eks-control-plane.md)
+ [EKS Auto Mode data plane](eks-auto-mode-data-plane.md)
+ [Workloads](workloads.md)