This week, Google announced in a blog post, that it has released the Google Key Management Service (KMS) in beta in selected countries. Google says that it has always supported efforts to encrypt customer data on the Internet, including using HTTPS.
The company says that, through this release, it broadens the number of encryption options available on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Garrett Bekker, Principal Security Analyst at 451 Research said:
With the launch of Cloud KMS, Google has addressed the full continuum of encryption and key management use cases for GCP customers.
Cloud KMS fills a gap by providing customers with the ability to manage their encryption keys in a multi-tenant cloud service, without the need to maintain an on-premise key management system or HSM.
Google also added that customers in regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, value hosted key management services because they are easy to use. Cloud KMS claims to offer a cloud-based root of trust that a company can monitor and audit. As opposed to custom-built or ad-hoc key management systems, which are difficult to scale and maintain, Google says that Cloud KMS makes it easy to keep keys safe.
With Cloud KMS, Google claims that customers can manage symmetric encryption keys in a cloud-hosted solution, whether they are used to protect data stored in GCP or another environment.