CA entered the key management market this week, joining others such as HP, IBM, EMC/RSA, PGP, and Thales. CA’s announcement was relatively quiet, but it is still significant because:

1. CA joins the KMIP initiative. CA becomes another leading technology vendor to join the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) group within OASIS. The group hopes to have a specification ratified soon and working product next year. CA’s engineers will focus on application key management as part of a holistic key management architecture.
2. CA anchors key management to System z. While many vendors have key management appliances, the bulk of the market activity I see remains on the mainframe. CA will support IBM’s TS1120 and 1130 tape drives, interoperate with RACF, TopSecret, and ACF2, and all the mainframe storage facilities as well. Finally, CA key management is part of its “Mainframe 2.0″ initiative to simplify and modernize mainframe operations.
3. CA understands the link between key management and identity. Many key management leaders are focused on storage alone, while others only care about PKI. CA is one of the few vendors to play in both the infrastructure and identity side of IT. Yes, the obvious link here is PKI, but the combination of encryption, key management, and identity could also be used for entitlement management and data security. For example, a contractor may have rights to a data file for a limited period of time only before the encryption key expires.

With its focus on the mainframe, CA didn’t get much attention with this announcement, but large enterprises — especially in financial services, defense, law enforcement, and intelligence — will recognize the value here right away.

In the meantime, this announcement also helps the rest of us who care about the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our data.

Related posts:

1. Symantec Moving to Define an Encryption Architecture
2. Juniper enters the Ethernet switching market
3. Open E-mail Encryption Issue with Massachusetts CMR 201 17
4. Oracle, Sun, and the Identity Management Waiting Game
5. BMC on a Roll

Tags: CA, encryption, key management, KMIP, mainframe, Oasis, System z