Open Standard for IT Security, Compliance, and Data Recovery

international open standards consortium, OASIS, has formed a new group to enable interoperability of key management services and clients. The KMIP Technical Committee will work to define a single, comprehensive protocol for communication between encryption systems and a broad range of new and legacy enterprise applications, including email, databases, and storage devices.

"As encryption technologies become more pervasive across the enterprise, key management quickly becomes a mission critical activity for protecting the sensitive data. Without a standard way to integrate encryption technologies and key management systems, data confidentiality and integrity may actually degrade," said Jon Oltsik, Principal Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "To address this issue, I’ve long been a strong proponent of key management standards and did what I could to push leading security vendors in this direction. I’m happy to say that the OASIS KMIP effort may finally fill this void."

KMIP will enable key lifecycle management, including the generation, submission, retrieval, and deletion of cryptographic keys. Designed for use by both legacy and new encryption applications, KMIP will support symmetric and asymmetric keys, digital certificates, and other "shared secrets."

"Our goal is to dramatically simplify the way companies encrypt and secure information," said Robert Griffin of EMC, co-chair of the OASIS KMIP Technical Committee.

"By removing redundant, incompatible key management processes, KMIP will provide better data security while at the same time reducing expenditures on multiple products," added Anthony Nadalin of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS KMIP Technical Committee.

"KMIP is being advanced as an open standard in direct response to customers’ needs to enable the widespread use of encryption," noted Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS. "The effort already has the backing of major stakeholders in this area, and we welcome others to join and have their views represented as this specification moves through the standardization process."

Participation in KMIP is open to all interested parties. Archives of the Committee’s work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will offer a mechanism for public comment.

"Interoperability across encryption and key management systems is a significant advancement that will enable acceptance of data protection on all types of devices from mainframes to banking devices to sensors. KMIP will allow customers to encrypt data with confidence anywhere in the enterprise or Cloud, knowing that it is not only secure, but can also be accessed when needed." -Anthony Nadalin, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Security Architect, IBM Tivoli Software

Red Hat
"Delivering secure open source software is one of Red Hat’s top priorities. By collaborating with industry partners through OASIS we are able to support standards in Key Management such as KMIP. These efforts directly effect our customers and ensure that they are deploying secure and hardened solutions." -Mark Little, Sr. Director of Engineering, Middleware, Red Hat

OASIS is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, and other applications. http://www.oasis-open.org

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