Securing Data in MongoDB Enterprise with Alliance Key Manager
“When choosing a key management solution, it needed to be 1) KMIP compliant and 2) affordable. Alliance Key Manager was both.”
- Jonathan Ganucheau, System Architect
The Seed Company
Founded in 1993 by Wycliffe Bible Translators Inc., Seed Company became one of the fastest growing Bible translation organizations by developing innovative ways to more rapidly, efficiently and accurately translate Scripture for groups who don’t have it in their language. Over a billion people worldwide don’t have the full Bible in the language they know best. More than 1,600 languages don’t have any Scripture at all. Seed Company’s goal is zero languages without Scripture by 2025. In this generation, the Bible will become available to all for church planting, evangelism and discipleship efforts led by the local Church.
The Challenge: Protecting Private Data in MongoDB with Encryption & Key Management
As Seed Company began to outgrow its on-premise data center, it knew that in order to transition services into the cloud, the security team needed to assure business leaders and partners that their data in the cloud would be safe. To meet internal security requirements, not only did the solution need to be cloud based, but encryption needed to live in a secondary cloud provider. By taking a hybrid cloud approach and deploying a service in a secondary cloud provider, Seed Company could securely manage encryption keys and protect data stored in MongoDB Enterprise.
While compliance wasn’t a requirement, meeting security best practices to protect the contact data for partners in the field was. With identities of partners in violent, oppressive countries at stake, a breach could literally mean the difference between life and death.
The Solution
Alliance Key Manager
Seed Company’s adoption of the cloud was reliant on the ability to adequately protect private data. Alliance Key Manager was essential to their transition. “After two months of discovery, we looked at all of the cloud encryption key management vendors and compared everything from features to price,” said Jonathan Ganucheau, System Architect. “Alliance Key Manager met all of our criteria - with KMIP compliance and affordability leading our decision.”
“If someone was able to hack into our primary cloud platform and extract our backups, they still wouldn’t be able to get the actual data because the key manager is in a secondary cloud provider. This provides us with another level of hardening,” continued Ganucheau.
By deploying Alliance Key Manager, Seed Company was able to meet their organization’s needs to protect partner data in MongoDB in the cloud.
Integration with MongoDB Enterprise
“Having invested in MongoDB Enterprise with KMIP encryption, there was no need to buy competing encryption solutions, adding to the overall expense of the project,” said Ganucheau. With a low total cost of ownership, Alliance Key Manager customers can leverage the built-in encryption engine in MongoDB, with no limits imposed to the number of servers or data that can be protected.
“During discovery, one thing that came as a surprise to us was the number of vendors who claimed to support KMIP, but actually didn’t. They maybe started with KMIP compliance, but then deviated off course and no longer met our requirement of being a true KMIP service,” continued Ganucheau.
With no client software to install, Alliance Key Manager offers unparalleled security, flexibility, and affordability for all users of MongoDB Enterprise.
Reliability
One of the top concerns organizations have when encrypting data is losing access to encryption keys. Alliance Key Manager mirrors keys between multiple load-balanced servers over a secure and mutually authenticated TLS connection for hot backup and disaster recovery support. “Uptime is critical for our organization. Alliance Key Manager has remained up 100% over the past year, which is a big deal for our organization. Set it and forget it. It just works,” finished Ganucheau.
“Between your cost structure and reliability, Alliance Key Manager has earned my highest recommendation.”
