The Trouble with Silos of Encryption

There are not nearly as many IT organizations using encryption as there should be. But among the organizations that do, an interesting problem is emerging: Various database systems have different encryption schemas that all come with their own management framework.

To address that issue, encrption and database security tools vendor Vormetric has released Vormetric Key Management, which centrally controls encryption keys being used across heterogeneous database platforms. Vormetric Key Management extends the key management technology used in Vormetric Data Security software to Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) systems, as well as custom applications that have built-in encryption, says Todd Thiemann, senior director of product marketing for Vormetric.

While this issue is not a major one for most IT organizations just yet, the number of databases that IT organizations are working with is starting to increase. Those include not just Oracle, IBM DB2, Micrsoft SQL Server and MySQL but also new data management technologies such as Hadoop. In fact, Thiemann says, Vormetric has a pilot program in place that extends its encryption technologies out to Hadoop.

The real challenge is going to be finding a way to centrally manage the encryption keys for all those data sources, many of which are just as likely to be running in the cloud as on premise.

To address that issue before it becomes a problem, IT organizations would be well-advised to come up with a strategic approach to managing encryption. Unfortunately, too many encryption decisions are being made on an ad hoc basis, which could easily result in multiple encryption systems that will wind up making the management of encryption keys more difficult than it really needs to be.