March 24, 2009

Adrian Phillips, Visa's Deputy Chief Enterprise Risk Officer, sees the three challenges with encryption as expense, speed and management. "Encryption is only as good as your key management system," he says.

 http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=1309&rf=032309eb

1. StrongKey is FREE and open-source software (FOSS).  As a result,it offers the lowest TCO of anyother key-management solution on the market.
2. StrongKey is platform-independent and Hardware Security Module (HSM)-independent.  As a result, it works on the fastest computers/HSM's you choose to deploy in your environment.
3. StrongKey offers the most sophisitcated key-management solution on the market today.  It is the onlySKMS that:

• Manages trillions of symmetric encryption keys, centrally
  
• Defines key-usage policies centrally, directing what encryption algorithm applications may use, when, for how long, etc.
  
• Define key-caching policies centrally, permitting application clients to continue encrypting/decrypting sensitive data even if the SKMS is inaccessible for weeks
• Uses digitally-signed and encrypted messages between the application client and the SKMS, permitting you to use your KM service over the internet without a VPN or SSL
• Digitally signs every record in the SKMS database, so it can protect you from back-channel attacks on the SKMS database
• Works with multiple cryptographic tokens so that you have the choice of whose FIPS-certified cryptographic module you want to use
• Does not use UserID/Password for SKMS Administrator/Security Officer logins, thus eleminating one of the weakest points of your security infrastructure
• Offers end-to-end security, thus addressing your encryption/KM requirements once and for all