Cryptographic Key Management Issues & Challenges in Cloud Services

Published

September 18, 2013

Author(s)

Ramaswamy Chandramouli, Michaela Iorga, Santosh Chokhani

Abstract

To interact with various services in the cloud and to store the data generated/processed by those services, several security capabilities are required. Based on a core set of features in the three common cloud services - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), we identify a set of security capabilities needed to exercise those features and the cryptographic operations they entail. An analysis of the common state of practice of the cryptographic operations that provide those security capabilities reveals that the management of cryptographic keys takes on an additional complexity in cloud environments compared to enterprise IT environments due to: (a) difference in ownership (between cloud Consumers and cloud Providers) and (b) control of infrastructures on which both the Key Management System (KMS) and protected resources are located. This document identifies the cryptographic key management challenges in the context of architectural solutions that are commonly deployed to perform those cryptographic operations.

Citation

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 7956

Report Number

7956

NIST Pub Series

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.7956

Keywords

Authentication, Cloud Services, Data Protection, Encryption, Key Management System (KMS), Secure Shell (SSH), Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Citation

Chandramouli, R. , Iorga, M. and Chokhani, S. (2013), Cryptographic Key Management Issues & Challenges in Cloud Services, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.7956 (Accessed October 8, 2025)