Since the first release of our public beta, we have been making steady progress on the Porticor Virtual Private Data solution. This is the first in a series of short posts describing the highlights of our latest product mini-releases. This time we are covering S3 security; specifically S3 encryption.
We have added transparent encryption in cloud, data integrity checking (a.k.a tamper-proofing) and cloud key management for Amazon Simple Storage Service objects. In case you’re wondering, this is simply the well beloved S3 object store. In the space of a few minutes, you can register to the beta program, get a Porticor virtual appliance installed into your AWS account, and have your S3 objects (all or some, as many as you want) be transparently protected, no heavy lifting required. This S3 security capability means S3 can now be a secure object store.
The GUI for S3 security is the simplest possible: just an Enable/Disable toggle button. Just press “enable” and you can use the S3 encryption feature.
This feature includes capabilities for both Encryption in Cloud and Cloud Key Management. This means S3 objects are automatically and transparently encrypted, and high security is implemented by managing each object’s encryption keys in cloud.
Your data will be protected with high-security, industry standard algorithms: AES-256 encryption and SHA-1 for data integrity. The encryption keys in cloud, one per S3 object, are stored in the Porticor Key Store, our unique cloud key management solution. And we use streaming so you don’t have to worry about performance.
The only thing you need to do on the client side (the server where your S3 application is running) is to make sure all S3 network traffic goes through your Porticor appliance. All of the management of encryption keys in cloud is included automatically. Full instructions for enabling S3 security and encryption in cloud are available on the feature page.
Why not give it a try, and let us know how it works for you and if we missed anything!