Encryption and key management have been onerous tasks in the data center. As organizations strive to comply with ever-expanding privacy and disclosure regulations, the need for encryption and key management has become more apparent, but often brings the added burdens of cost, complexity and performance. However, IBM System z* customers have a clear advantage, according to Gordon Arnold, IBM senior technical staff member.
“Built into the z/Architecture* and storage for System z hardware are a number of features for doing encryption in the storage hardware and managing the keys on the System z platform,” Arnold says. “So IBM and System z customers have some distinct advantages in the marketplace with that combination.”
Introduced last year, IBM Tivoli* Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM) plays in integral role, Arnold says. It transparently detects encryption-capable media to assign necessary authorization and encryption keys—helping solve potential problems by covering key installation, activation, management, expiration and destruction.
“We’ve built in high degrees of security, simplicity and robustness in the architecture of our systems and our storage to provide a new level of data protection at very low cost and very little overhead with TKLM,” Arnold says. IBM isn’t stopping there. It’s led the charge to create a new standard for key management.