Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Aravind N Thoram

Scott Field

Alex Mark Semenko

Dayi Zhou

Avraham Michael Ben-Menahem

John Michael Walton

Kahren Tevosyan

Scott A Field

Sudhakara Reddy Evuri

Mayank Mahajan

A compute resource provider system is shown having an encryption agent that obtains a cryptographic key for a virtual machine and sends the cryptographic key to a host agent. The host agent receives the cryptographic key from the encryption agent and stores the received cryptographic key to a user key vault. The host agent generates a key vault secret reference (KVSR) locator pointing to the cryptographic key stored in the user key vault, associates the KVSR with the virtual diskset, and sends a success message to the encryption agent. The encryption agent receives the success message from the host and, responsive thereto, encrypts the virtual diskset using the cryptographic key. Subsequently, another host agent uses the KVSR to obtain the cryptographic key from the key vault and boot the virtual machine with the encrypted virtual diskset.

Encryption at rest for cloud-resourced virtual machines

Systems and methods are provided for adding security to client data by maintaining keys providing access to the client data remotely from the client data. In some circumstances, the systems encrypt a cluster of data using an encryption key, associate the cluster of encrypted data with a unique identifier and send the unique identifier and the decryption key to a server for storage. The decryption key is then received from the server and is used to decrypt the cluster of encrypted data. A server can also perform policy checks or trigger additional authentication such as SMS, phone, or email notification before allowing access to a key. Furthermore, in some instances, the server can also prevent access to the stored keys in response to anomalies, such as decommissioning and other asset management events.

Theft and tamper resistant data protection

Systems and methods are provided for adding security to client data by maintaining decryption keys at a server that provide access to encrypted keys that are maintained at a client system with encrypted client data. A specialized protocol is utilized for accessing the decryption keys from the server. Once obtained, the decryption key is used to decrypt the encrypted key at the client and then the newly decrypted decryption key is used to decrypt the encrypted data. A server can also perform policy checks or trigger additional authentication such as SMS, phone, or email notification before allowing access to the server decryption key. Furthermore, in some instances, the server can also prevent access to the server decryption keys in response to anomalies, such as decommissioning and other asset management events.

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Aravind N Thoram