Protecting sensitive data stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a major priority for SlimTrader, a company helping businesses and individuals in Africa complete secure transactions via mobile ecommerce solutions. SlimTrader chose AWS to host their extensive database of users based on their ability in AWS to reduce costs and scale up as their business grows. The challenge, however, was to find an encryption and encryption key management solution that also featured low initial costs and could scale as well.

Implementing strong encryption and key management in the cloud has been a major challenge in the past. Recently, AWS released the AWS CloudHSM; however, the high startup costs for implementing this encryption key management solution as well as its limitations made this solution an impractical fit. That’s why SlimTrader chose Alliance Key Manager for AWS.  According to Martin Pagel, CTO of Slim Trader:

“Our main challenge is that we’re cloud based, so we can’t use an HSM because we don’t have a physical IT infrastructure. We want to do it the right way, and do it in the cloud. With Alliance Key Manager for AWS I can deploy encryption key management the way I want, and I don’t have to ask anyone in Amazon for help.”

Alliance Key Manager not only scales to meet your business needs, but also gives you complete administrative control over your own virtual key server. Having this level of control is critical in a cloud environment where you may not be sure who you are sharing resources with. Alliance Key Manager also uses the same FIPS 140-2-compliant encryption key management and NIST-validated AES encryption service found in Townsend Security’s HSMs so that you can provably meet compliance requirements for several industry security regulations. Meeting compliance requirements is important to SlimTrader and many of their larger customers.

Overall, Townsend Security helped SlimTrader achieve their security goals and overcome security challenges in four major ways:

• Making encryption and key management in AWS easy. For many businesses, moving their data to the cloud is simply more practical than assembling an internal IT department. It is also significantly easier.  “The ease of firing up an AKM cloud instance and having control over it appeals to me,” said Pagel, “And I don’t have the limitations of needing to install a physical box.”
• Making encryption and key management in AWS affordable. SlimTrader also chose AKM for AWS for affordability. With Alliance Key Manager for AWS, SlimTrader is taking advantage of Townsend Security’s no end-point license fee model that will allow them to grow without burdening their budget. For strong data security to become ubiquitous, and for data breaches to become fewer, encryption and key management must become affordable. With AKM for AWS, small businesses such as SlimTrader can lead the way in data breach prevention.
• Providing encryption and key management that works with their applications. SlimTrader needed a key management solution that would work seamlessly with MySQL and Drupal in AWS. Alliance Key Manager is designed from the ground up to integrate with many platforms, applications, and databases and can protect encryption keys for data encrypted at the application level.
• Certified Solutions. SlimTrader works with several banks and government agencies in Africa who consider PCI compliance important. “When we manage data on their behalf, we need to manage it securely,” says SlimTrader CTO Martin Pagel. FIPS 140-2 compliance is critical for many organizations who must meet government standards, and important for businesses that want provably defensible encryption key management.  Alliance Key Manager also provides onboard NIST-validated AES encryption service. This service allows you to provably meet compliance regulations for encryption.

To see for yourself how easy encryption and key management can be in Amazon Web Services, download a free 30-day evaluation.