SafeNet releases first crypto hypervisor
At a time when confidence in perimeter security is waning, and organizations are increasingly facing business pressure to adopt cloud strategies and consolidate their data center resources, the question of how to securely migrate data to public, private, or hybrid cloud environments has become a primary concern.
SafeNet announced availability of the SafeNet Crypto Hypervisor, enabling organizations to virtualize their crypto resources, and ensuring that all data can be safely encrypted, even as it moves in a virtualized environment, in order to prevent data loss.
With the SafeNet Crypto Hypervisor, IT departments and service providers can deliver on-demand, elastic key vaulting and encryption services for data protection across physical, virtual, and cloud environments in minutes instead of days.
The solution’s high assurance encryption services fit the cloud operations model and the full cost and innovation advantages of virtualisation can be exploited without compromising security or compliance. IT maintains full, centralised control of the delivery of encryption services such as secure key storage. Users have full control of their encryption service, and can be assured that other tenants and administrators cannot access their encryption keys.
“Although encryption is becoming more common, data is only as safe as the keys protecting it,” said Christian A. Christiansen, Program Vice President of Security Products & Services with IDC. “Storing the keys in special-purpose hardware, such as a hardware security module, is the recommended best practice. However, until now, hardware encryption solutions have not provided sufficient agility and flexibility needed in virtualized and cloud environments. Rolling out a virtual application that requires encryption, signed digital certificates, or other PKI functions can often add days or weeks to a project.”
SafeNet’s Crypto Hypervisor solves these issues by extending and virtualizing the market-leading SafeNet Luna SA 5 Hardware Security Module (HSM) to fit into the operational models of virtual and cloud environments. The Crypto Hypervisor can be centrally controlled and configured by crypto administrators using the new SafeNet Crypto Command Centre.
The administrators can build a catalog of services available on the Crypto Hypervisor. Users can now log in to a web portal to view a catalog of services that they have permission to create. These users can provision the services they need on demand on shared physical hardware. This process can reduce new service rollout from days down to minutes.
Benefits include:
Cloud-compatible crypto: Built for the cloud operational model, the Crypto Hypervisor enables organizations to consolidate crypto efforts, eliminate “islands of encryption’, and create a more secure and efficient operation. Organisations can use as little as five percent of the hardware they use today for the same amount of encryption services.
Central control: The Crypto Command Centre can manage hundreds of independent virtualised HSMs. Strong audit controls with tamper-evident, digitally-signed logs are maintained for all functions. This centralised control and logging allows customers to build a centre of excellence around encryption and simplify the audit process.
The most secure key vault available: The Crypto Hypervisor technology virtualizes the field-proven and trusted SafeNet Luna HSMs, which currently provide protection for over $1 trillion in daily financial transactions; offer five nines of availability; and are trusted by enterprises and governments around the world.