Backing up your vaults and keys is an essential practice in ensuring the security and availability of your resources. It involves preserving crucial data before any deletion occurs.
Importance of Backing Up
Backing up vaults and keys is a best practice in the realm of security management. It ensures that even if resources are deleted, their data remains accessible for recovery purposes.
Restrictions and Considerations
When performing backups, it’s crucial to be aware of certain restrictions. Only virtual private vaults are supported for backups, excluding normal or shared vaults. Additionally, only master encryption keys with HSM protection type can be part of backups, excluding software-protected keys.
Relationship with Master Encryption Keys
Master encryption keys, always associated with a vault, maintain their relationship even during backups. This means that backing up a key also entails backing up its associated vault.
Backup Process
Backups are stored in existing or new Object Storage buckets and can be copied to buckets in other regions through cross-region replication. These backups serve as valuable resources for disaster recovery scenarios, enabling seamless operations migration between regions.
Restoring Vaults and Keys
Restoring vaults and keys involves bringing back both the vault and its associated keys, ensuring their coherence and functionality.
Restoration Process
When restoring, the vault is first brought back, followed by the restoration of its associated keys. Keys must always be associated with a vault before restoration, ensuring a consistent and secure environment.
User Interface
The restoration process typically involves specifying the backup source, which can be an Object Storage bucket, URL, or an uploaded file.
Cross-Region Replication
Cross-region replication facilitates disaster recovery and operational continuity by replicating keys from one region to another.
Benefits and Considerations
This feature enables the creation of vault replicas in different regions, ensuring availability and resilience in case of regional failures. However, it’s important to note that only virtual private vaults are supported for replication, and each source vault can have only one destination vault.
Managing Replication
Replication operations, including creation, deletion, and updates, are automatically synchronized between source and replica vaults. Although keys cannot be directly created or backed up in replica vaults, they support cryptographic operations, enhancing flexibility and security across regions.
Discontinuing Replication
To stop replication, the replica vault can be deleted, terminating the synchronization process between source and destination.
Conclusion
Backing up and replicating vaults and keys are essential components of robust security and disaster recovery strategies. By understanding the processes and considerations involved, organizations can ensure the integrity and availability of their cryptographic resources across regions.