Virtual HSM Fleet Scaling for Cryptographic Key Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Large-scale computing environments face challenges in managing cryptographic key security and scalability, as single Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are overwhelmed by demand, and coordinating multiple HSMs is complex due to non-exportability of cryptographic keys, making it difficult to maintain synchronized keys across a fleet.
Innovation Solution
A virtual HSM is implemented, dynamically scalable to meet workload demands, using a load balancer and a fleet of physical HSMs to provide a single logical interface, allowing for transparent scaling, addition, and removal of HSMs without manual intervention, ensuring key synchronization and security through cryptographic protocols.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple HSMs are coordinated to handle large-scale cryptographic loads, then the cryptographic operation capacity is improved, but the system complexity and difficulty of managing synchronized cryptographic keys increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple physical HSMs into a single virtual HSM that presents a unified interface to clients. The virtual HSM manages a fleet of physical HSMs, coordinating their operations and synchronizing cryptographic keys across them. This merging approach allows the system to handle large-scale cryptographic loads while abstracting away the complexity of managing multiple individual HSMs, as clients interact with only one virtual entity.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual HSM acts as an intermediary between clients and the fleet of physical HSMs. It receives cryptographic operation requests from clients, distributes them to appropriate physical HSMs, and aggregates the results. This intermediary layer simplifies client management by providing a single point of contact while enabling the system to leverage the combined capacity of multiple physical HSMs.
2Ease of operation
If a single HSM is used to simplify management, then the ease of operation is improved, but the cryptographic operation capacity becomes insufficient for large-scale environments
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual HSM merges the capabilities of multiple physical HSMs while presenting a single management interface. Clients experience the simplicity of interacting with one HSM, yet the underlying system leverages the combined cryptographic operation capacity of the entire fleet of physical HSMs, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and processing capacity.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual HSM provides universal access to cryptographic operations across multiple physical HSMs through a single interface. It handles key generation, storage, and cryptographic operations that can be distributed across the fleet, making the system both easy to operate (single interface) and highly capable (distributed processing).
Data Source
AI summary
A virtual hardware security module (“HSM”) is used to perform cryptographic operations. The virtual HSM may provision and coordinate requests between one or more HSMs within a fleet of HSMs. A set of cryptographic keys and/or digital certificates may be exchanged between a client and the virtual HSM such that the client and the virtual HSM may communicate with each other via a cryptographically protected communication session. The fleet of HSMs of a virtual HSM may be scaled up or scaled down according to various criteria. Cryptographic key material may be propagated between HSMs of the fleet using a fleet transfer key. Digital certificates may be used to demonstrate that one or more cryptographic keys were generated by a service provider and/or manufacturer.