A new key management service has been announced by Google today, for its cloud computing service popularly known as Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The tool is now available in beta and will help the developers with a cloud-hosted system in dealing with and monitoring encryption keys.
Once amalgamated with Google’s previously existing services such as Identity Access Management, it will also be able to handle encryption keys for other systems as well. Enterprises such as banks and healthcare will get advantages of the new service. This is an assertion to the Google’s 2015 introduced feature which allowed its users to bring their own encryption keys to the table, free of cost.
Two years before, another leading cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its Key Management Service, similar to the one launched today. Box, the cloud storage software company announced a key management service in the aftermath. Other public cloud service providers like Microsoft and IBM (through Bluemix) are also out in the arena with their own cloud-based key management services.
Google product manager Maya Kaczorowski wrote in a blog post;
As an alternative to custom-built or ad-hoc key management systems, which are difficult to scale and maintain, Cloud KMS makes it easy to keep your keys safe.
Kaczorowski also mentioned that the tool will offer a companion application programming interface (API), which will allow users to programatically create, use, rotate, and destroy the encryption keys. Apart from increasing the flexibility, this also makes the whole system that much more secure.
Google is known to excel in cloud services both in terms of pricing as well as geographical availability. Its reputation is built because of the fact that it never compromises with its services. In order to strengthen its cloud infrastructure, the company has also promised 12 new regions of data centers in March.
