Ever since LTO-4 tape drives came out in 2007, the built-in encryption capabilities of LTO tape drives have helped organizations encrypt the data they store on tape, keeping sensitive information safe once it leaves the datacenter. However, as anyone who has looked at or deployed LTO-based encryption knows, encryption is just the tip of the iceberg. Encryption key management is really where the complexity lies.

Part of the challenge is that there hasn’t been an industry standard for requesting and passing encryption keys over the network – until now.

Last fall, a standards body called OASIS announced the ratification of version 1.0 of the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) standard for key management. So what does this mean for companies using or considering encryption?

For one, it will take some time before the industry broadly supports KMIP. Vendors like IBM, RSA, Safenet and Quantum have all announced their commitment to the standard and are now starting to bring KMIP-compliant solutions to market, either in the form of encryption devices (i.e. “clients”) that support KMIP, or KMIP-compliant key servers. Quantum’s Scalar tape libraries will all be compatible with the KMIP 1.0 standard within the next year – which will allow companies to connect their Scalar tape libraries to key servers from other companies that support the KMIP 1.0 standard.

The general idea here is to have one centralized key manager – the repository for all encryption keys that will create, send and manage the encryption keys throughout their lifecycle. This key server will send keys to any KMIP-compliant device that requests a key. The device might be a tape library, or a disk array, or an application that needs a key.

Of course, the roll out of a standard is complex and will take time, but at least the KMIP 1.0 standard is a first step to let companies move toward a centralized key management architecture for their entire datacenter. Ultimately, this will give them more choice and flexibility to deploy the security solution that is right for them, and make things just a bit simpler along the way.