Microsoft .NET (C#, VBNET, J#) Developer Solutions
Encryption Key Management for Compliance
A variety of compliance regulations now require that Enterprise customers separate encryption keys from the data that they protect. For Microsoft .NET developers this means storing encryption keys on an external appliance designed for this purpose, and securely retrieving encryption keys in .NET applications as they are needed for encryption and decryption tasks. Alliance Key Manager is an affordable solution that meets all compliance regulations for the secure creation, management, storage, and distribution of encryption keys. Alliance Key Manager is FIPS-140-2 certified (certificate number 1449) and is perfect for use in Microsoft Windows applications.
Alliance .NET Assembly
To speed the development of Microsoft .NET applications Townsend provides a .NET assembly that can be installed on the Windows server. This .NET assembly provides an easy to use component for your .NET applications for encryption key retrieval. The Townsend software integrates with the Windows certificate store for the secure SSL/TLS connection to the Alliance Key Manager key server.
Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
When you install the Townsend key retrieval .NET assembly software it automatically registers with the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) using a strong name. Once registered to GAC the software becomes available to all of your Windows applications. The Global Assembly Cache provides additional security protections that prevent substitution or corruption of the software.
Custom Interfaces for Key Retrieval
For Microsoft .NET developers who want to write their own interface to the Alliance Key Manager, a publish interface specification is available. In this case no software from Townsend is required to retrieve keys from the Alliance Key Manager key server. Your .NET application creates a secure and authenticated TLS connection to the server, authenticates the server, requests an encryption key, and uses the key for encryption, decryption, and message authentication tasks.
Documentation and Sample Code
The Alliance Key Manager product CD contains documentation on the use of the Alliance Key Manager .NET assembly software and sample application code that you can use to get started. A Visual Studio project is included so that you can easily create the applications you need.
Encryption Key Management APIs
Most Enterprise customers use the Alliance Windows key management application to create and manage encryption keys on the Alliance Key Manager appliance. However there are certain applications that need to perform key management functions under program control. Alliance Key Manager provides Application Program Interfaces to the .NET developer to enable all of the normal encryption key management functions including creating encryption keys, rotating keys, revoking keys, and so forth. More than 80 APIs are provided for every aspect of key management. This means that you can have complete control over encryption key management from your .NET application running on Windows.
AES Encryption Libraries
The Microsoft .NET framework provides encryption APIs to the developer to encrypt and decrypt data. In most cases these .NET framework APIs provided by Microsoft are adequate for Windows applications. Occasionally Enterprise .NET developers need AES encryption APIs that are compatible with applications across a variety of operating system platforms. Townsend Security provides their Alliance AES encryption software for the Microsoft .NET environment. These AES libraries are NIST certified through the AES Validation program, and interoperate with Townsend AES libraries on a variety of other platforms including Linux, Unix, IBM I (AS/400, iSeries), and IBM System z Mainframe platforms. You can encrypt on one platform and decrypt on a different platform without exposing the data during transport. For more information about the Townsend AES encryption APIs click here.
Tokenization for Microsoft .NET Developers
Tokenization is an alternative data protection method that preserves the format of the original data. The Townsend Alliance Token Manager solution provides tokenization services to Microsoft .NET applications and applications on all over major operating systems.
SQL Server 2008 and EKM
If you use Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and would like information about Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) or Column Level Encryption with EKM please click here to get in touch with one of our encryption specialists.
