Today’s digital world requires organisations to be protected by data. With businesses increasingly turning to cloud-based solutions for critical operations management, ensuring this vital information’s safety and privacy has become paramount. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that stands out in this respect is Workday; this blog will cover its extensive data security measures with specific focus on its Key Management Service (WD KMS) and Bring Your Key (BYOK) feature.
What Is Workday Key Management Service (WD KMS)? Workday Key Management Service (WD KMS) is an all-inclusive key management system designed to safely encrypt and decrypt tenant data using cryptographic keys, protecting sensitive information while keeping it confidential and tamper-proof.
Workday Key Management Service (WD KMS) is an all-inclusive key management system designed to safely encrypt and decrypt tenant data using cryptographic keys, protecting sensitive information while keeping it confidential and tamper-proof.
At the core of WD KMS lies its concept of key hierarchy. Workday utilises a root key as its master key for encrypting and decrypting all other keys within its hierarchy, offering additional protection in case one key is compromised while leaving others safe.
Workday stores its cryptographic keys using hardware security modules (HSMs) to further bolster security.
HSMs are dedicated devices for secure key storage and processing; these HSMs adhere to National Institute of Standards and Technology 800-57 recommendations as well as Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 Level 3 compliance certification to provide protection from physical as well as logical attacks on these keys.
One of the primary design principles of Workday KMS is environmental isolation. Key management infrastructure resides on its own VLAN or VPC to minimise any risk from unauthorised access and ensure it can operate independently from other Workday services and environments.
Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) is an encryption key management capability provided by Workday that enables enterprises to take ownership and control of their encryption keys. This feature is especially helpful for organizations needing to meet stringent regulatory requirements or enforce specific security policies that mandate customer-managed keys.
1. Implementing BYOK in Workday involves several steps. Schlissel Generation Enterprises creates symmetric keys on their Amazon Web Services (AWS) account that encrypt and decrypt data within Workday tenant tenants.
2. Key Policy Editing: After creating keys, the next step should be editing their Key Policy. This policy determines who may use these keys and under what conditions. When setting this policy up, care must be taken so that only authorised users and services can access these keys.
3. Tenant Reboot and Confirmation: After creating and setting the policy, Workday tenants must be rebooted before the enterprise confirms the use of new keys in the environment and that data encryption and decryption processes are functioning as expected. Upon rebooting, enterprises should verify the use of new keys through confirmation steps in Workday tenant environments. This step ensures keys are fully integrated within Workday environments for optimal data encryption/decryption processes.
By controlling their own keys, enterprises gain more control over data security, which is particularly crucial when adhering to stringent data protection regulations.
Many industries, such as healthcare and finance, have specific regulations for data encryption and key management. BYOK helps organisations meet these regulations by permitting them to utilise their own approved key management systems.
Enterprises can tailor key management practices to their individual security needs, which is especially helpful for complex security architectures.
Data security is of utmost importance for any organisation. Workday’s dedication to offering strong security features is evident through its Key Management Service (WD KMS) and Bring Your Key (BYOK) features. Workday ensures your data remains protected by employing advanced encryption techniques, hardware security modules, and an orderly key hierarchy. At the same time, their BYOK feature enables enterprises to take control of their encryption keys thus fulfilling regulatory requirements while increasing overall security.
