Secrets as a service
AssigneeEMC IP Holding Company LLC
InventorRAY DAVID WHITMER
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods for securing objects in a computing environment. Objects are encrypted using keys that are also encrypted after encrypting the objects. In order to access the objects, a master key that is unknown to the service storing the objects and/or managing the keys is used to decrypt the keys so that the objects can be decrypted with the decrypted key. Thus, a key is needed to access the key needed to access the object. The master key is typically maintained separately from all of the encrypted objects and corresponding encrypted keys.
Claims7
A method for managing keys for objects stored in a cloud service that stores objects, the method comprising:
- storing keys at a key server in the cloud service, wherein the keys stored at the key server are always encrypted at the cloud service;
- associating the keys with a manifest at the key server, wherein the manifest identifies objects associated with the keys stored at the key server;
- storing a master key at a client, wherein all decryption of the keys stored at the key server occurs at the client such that the keys are never exposed in an unencrypted form at the cloud service;
- accessing the keys and the objects from the cloud service in an encrypted form;
- and decrypting the keys and the objects at the client, wherein the master key is used decrypt the keys needed to decrypt the encrypted objects accessed from the cloud service.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.