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Sensitive Data

Sensitive data which is stored internally within our runtime memory or database is always encrypted with a secret key and with the strongest possible encryption algorithm.

Types of sensitive data handled​

  1. Sensitive data in the cloud provider credentials data.
  2. Sensitive data in the service deployment requests.
  3. Sensitive data in the service access parameters.

Algorithm for encryption​

We can use any algorithm supported by Java as mentioned here. By default, the supported algorithm is AES with CBC mode. The default configuration can be overridden by updating the below three parameters.

xpanse.secrets.encryption.algorithm.name=AES
xpanse.secrets.encryption.algorithm.mode=CBC
xpanse.secrets.encryption.algorithm.padding=ISO10126Padding

Secret Key​

This is the most critical piece of the solution since this key is used to encrypt all secrets stored and hence can't be compromised.

The below two properties must be used to provide the values of the secret key and initial vector

xpanse.secrets.encryption.secrete.key.value=""

# If the selected algorithm supports/needs initial vector, then provide this value as well.
xpanse.secrets.encryption.initial.vector=""
generating random secure keys

There are many ways do it and one of the easy and straightforward ways is to use the online tool - https://acte.ltd/utils/randomkeygen.

Here the 'Encryption key 256', must be used as the secret key and 'Basic 16' as the initial vector.

Secret Key in file​

The secret key can be provided either as a file or directly injected as a property. If a secret key file is provided, then the key in the file gets the priority. Application checks if the file is available in the provided path and if the file isn't empty. If both aren't true, then it tries to get the secret key from the configuration parameter directly.

Location of the secret key can be provided by the below configuration parameter. This must be a fully qualified path that's accessible to xpanse runtime.

xpanse.secrets.encryption.secrete.key.file=""
a valid secret key is mandatory

If a valid secret key isn't found from both sources, then the application startup will fail.