KEY MANAGEMENT IN MULTI-TENANT ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

Tenants in a multi-tenant shared deployment are provided their own distinct key spaces over which they control a key management system. In this manner, virtual key management domains are created on a per-tenant (per-customer) basis so that, whenever a particular customer's data is co-tenanted, stored, transmitted or virtualized in the IT infrastructure of the provider's datacenter(s), it is secured using key management materials specific to that customer. This assures that the entirety of a tenant's data remains secure by cryptographically isolating it from other tenants' applications. The virtual key management domains are established using a broadcast encryption (BE) protocol and, in particular, a multiple management key variant scheme of that protocol. The broadcast encryption- based virtual key management system (VKMS) and protocol achieves per-tenant (as well as per-application) secured isolation of data and can be used across any combination of resources in or across all levels of a co-tenanted IT infrastructure.