Salesforce expands encryption options with bring your own keys

Salesforce has stepped up by providing the encryption feature for their business by adding BYOK “Bring Your Own Key” to its Salesforce shield cloud service. Though cloud computing services have grown immensely, there are some security concerns particularly in the field of healthcare and finance. This ensures that users are solely responsible for keeping secure their own keys. If the keys are a lost, they could lose the access to the data.

In 2015, it was introduced that, encryption and monitoring functions were introduced by shield cloud service to fulfill the requirements. This Encryption keys are based on the two factors (i) tenant secret (ii) salesforce master keys. Traditionally, this system was managed by key-management infrastructure which accessed through point and click interface.

This new system, describe in BYOK are thoroughly tested by customers and third party key provider. The release of this version is not yet revealed but it is expected to launch in late this year of 2016. Ultimately customers are getting more and more control towards the system. Brian Goldfarb, senior vice president of app cloud marketing at Salesforce, told eweek. "Customers asked us for more control and now they're in the driver's seat."

“BYOK” offers high control when it comes to encryption by maintaining the security standards. And with the BYOK encryption, users have the chance to supply to their own tenants to create encryption keys in a shield. These tenants are independently managed by hardware security module through AWS security management service. C.J. Radford - vice president of crowd addressed that, this is the robust encryption service and enterprises can easily become the cryptographic experts without the need of enterprise department.

BYOK features are designed user-friendly and simple enough for the users to use. Eventually, after the release, people will realize that the real solution is encryption and not building the data centers in various countries. This feature is in pilot testing and when released it will not impose any extra charges. BYOK technology is becoming increasingly popular. Microsoft Azure offers it, as does Amazon Web Services.