Oracle Launches Vault to Lock Encryption Keys in Enterprise Data Center

Last week, as the connected world panicked over the massive login credentials heist by a Russian crime ring, Oracle launched a new product for protecting and managing encryption keys used on systems in enterprise data centers.

The Oracle Key Vault is a “software appliance” is an addition to the Oracle Database security portfolio. It centralizes management of encryption keys and credential files, such as Oracle wallet files, Java KeyStores, Kerberos keytab files, SSH key files and SSL certificate files.

The solution is optimized for the Oracle stack, including database and Fusion middleware. It uses Oracle Linux and Oracle Database for security, availability and scalability.

Vipin Samar, vice president of database security product development at Oracle, said there was growing regulatory pressure worldwide to encrypt more data, which created a need for centralized management of encryption keys and credential files in data centers. “Oracle Key Vault is a modern, standards-based product that allows organizations to reduce the overhead of regulatory compliance with a solution that protects Oracle Database encryption master keys, Oracle wallet files, Java KeyStores and other credential files,” he said in a statement.

The worldwide push to step up encryption in data centers did not come solely out of fear of criminals. Companies doing business online have been encrypting more and more of the data stored in their data centers and traveling between their data centers in response to the recent revelations by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the agency had been collecting data wholesale from the world’s digital communications networks.

Companies like Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Microsoft have announced that they would encrypt ever more data moving through or stored on their infrastructure to prevent government spying.