Key Management
Key management covers the generation, storage, distribution, rotation, revocation and destruction of cryptographic keys throughout their entire life cycle.
What is Key Management?
Definition
Key Management covers the whole life of a cryptographic key: generating it with adequate entropy, storing it so it cannot be read by whoever can already read the data, distributing it to the systems that need it, rotating it on a schedule, and revoking and destroying it at the end. It is where most real-world encryption actually fails — the algorithm is rarely the weak point, but a key committed to a repository, shared across every environment, or never rotated reliably certainly is. In cybersecurity practice keys are held in a dedicated KMS or HSM precisely so the people and systems using them never have to hold them directly.
Role in cybersecurity
Key Management plays an important role in building organizational resilience against cyber threats. Implementing appropriate mechanisms in this area is required by regulations such as NIS2, DORA and ISO 27001.