Providing secure services for a virtual infrastructure

Abstract

Virtualization brings exibility to the data center and enables separations allowing for better security properties. For these security properties to be fully utilized, virtual machines need to be able to connect to secure services such as networking and storage. This paper addresses the problems associated with managing the cryptographic keys upon which such services rely by ensuring that keys remain within the trusted computing base. Here we describe a general architecture for managing keys tied to the underlying virtualized systems, with a specific example given for secure storage.