Townsend Gets VMware Certification for Encryption Key Manager

July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

Townsend Security has achieved VMware Ready status for Alliance Key Manager, its encryption and key management product that works with all major operating systems, including IBM i. The certification should give Townsend customers the confidence to use hybrid deployment techniques for their key management software.

Alliance Key Manager is a FIPS 140-2 certified encryption key management solution that is used to create, manage, and distribute 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit AES keys for any application or databases. Townsend provides sample code for implementing key retrieval routines into RPG, COBOL, .NET, C, and Java applications running across a range of operating systems, including IBM i, z/OS, Windows, Unix, and Linux.

Initially, Townsend sold the software on its own standalone server, as a hardware security module (HSM). This approach was taken to ensure the security of the encryption keys, which are the “keys to the kingdom,” as it’s often said.

With the VMware Ready certification, Townsend customers can now feel good about deploying Alliance Key Manager on a slice of the VMware hypervisor. This is important because it gives customers the freedom to move the virtualized Alliance Key Manager environment to different hardware–perhaps even to the cloud.

“Our customers have been asking us to support the VMware virtualization architecture, and I am proud that we are offering our key management solution for this platform,” Townsend Security CEO Patrick Townsend states in a press release. “Alliance Key Manager for VMware will help our customers feel confident that they are deploying the best possible key management solution in a VMware context, whether it is in their data centers or in the cloud.”

Townsend is also bringing support for Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) to Alliance Key Manager. KMIP is a new standard that defines how encryption key management products connect to the encryption routines in operating systems and other enterprise IT assets, such as tape drives. The company also recently announced support for TrueCrypt, an encryption technology exclusive to Windows.