2.1.1.2.1 Ensure Critical Data is Encrypted with Customer Managed Keys (CMK)

Information

Customer Managed Keys introduce additional depth to security by providing a means to manage access control for encryption keys. Where compliance and security frameworks indicate the need, and organizational capacity allows, sensitive data at rest can be encrypted using Customer Managed Keys (CMK) rather than Microsoft Managed keys.

By default in Azure, data at rest tends to be encrypted using Microsoft Managed Keys. If your organization wants to control and manage encryption keys for compliance and defense-in-depth, Customer Managed Keys can be established.

While it is possible to automate the assessment of this recommendation, the assessment status for this recommendation remains 'Manual' due to ideally limited scope. The scope of application - which workloads CMK is applied to - should be carefully considered to account for organizational capacity and targeted to workloads with specific need for CMK.

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Impact:

If the key expires due to setting the 'activation date' and 'expiration date', the key must be rotated manually.

Using Customer Managed Keys may also incur additional man-hour requirements to create, store, manage, and protect the keys as needed.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/19304

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION, SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), 800-53|SC-28, 800-53|SC-28(1), CSCv7|14.8

Plugin: microsoft_azure

Control ID: 6abbf808f3ae2c89d002365930d2803f4a7a94844b60d5d03219007c691c5d8b