Standards Based Integration of Advanced Key Management Capabilities with Openstack

Abstract

The majority of the IT world is currently shifting to cloud platforms, and this calls for a greater measure of security for clouds. The emphasis for security originates from the need to transfer data across or within clouds without a third party being able to access the transferred information. This data is encrypted and decrypted using keys and is managed by Key Lifecycle Managers (KLMs) which communicate using a standardized protocol. Thus, to provide end user flexibility which helps in choosing the most reliable KLM, it is essential for cloud platforms to provide support for a standardized protocol so as to allow integration with external Key Lifecycle Managers.