Baltimore-based data protection vendor, SafeNet, has released, what the company says, is the industry’s first Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) standards-based EKM solution using a pre-configured hardware appliance.
“As the use of encryption grows and various solutions are deployed, key management becomes exponentially critical and complex,” said Vic Wheatman, vice president, Gartner Research. “Mismanagement of keys can expose an organization to unnecessary risk.”
KeySecure is SafeNet’s latest offering that allows organizations to centrally protect, manage, and control data, keys, and policies across a wide range of heterogeneous enterprise systems. The hardware-based EKM platform – based on the OASIS KMIP 1.0 standard – KeySecure comes at a time when key management is at a bit of a crossroads.
Escalating threats, expanding regulatory requirements, and the movement to cloud-based or virtualized infrastructures, drive the need for a more unified approach to management for multi-vendor environments. This applies to shared environments as well, and those that are managed by other organizations.
“Key management is the foundation of encryption services, and is rapidly becoming a critical requirement for protecting and managing sensitive data across the enterprise,” said Tsion Gonen, corporate vice president, Products and Marketing at SafeNet.
“We see customers increasingly leveraging key management as the engine behind central cryptographic operations to improve data protection and reduce cost, complexity, and sprawl.”
In related news, SafeNet received baseline approval from the US Government for its new MDeX system, last month. MDeX, or Multi-Domain eXchange, was designed to address cross domain data sharing between government organizations. Earning a Unified Cross Domain Management Office (UCDMO) Cross Domain Inventory, Version 4.0 baseline, means that SafeNet is now free to offer MDeX to departments such as Homeland Security, and other intelligence agencies.
With the company’s involvement in the KIMP Technical Committee, such expansion will surely grow to include hardware-based defenses for governments as well.
Related Reading: Are You Gambling with Your Mission-Critical Security Assets?
