Overview of Cloud KMS
With Cloud KMS, Google’s focus is to provide a scalable, reliable, and performant solution with a wide spectrum of options that you can control on a platform that is straightforward to use. Let us start with a quick overview of the Cloud KMS architecture.
Figure 9.1 – The Cloud KMS architecture
The key components of the Cloud KMS platform are depicted in Figure 9.1. Administrators can access key management services through the Google Cloud console or CLI, as well as through the REST or gRPC APIs. A REST API or gRPC is used by applications to access key management services.
When creating a key on the Cloud KMS platform, you can select a protection level to define which key backend the key should use. The Cloud KMS platform has two backends (excluding Cloud EKM): the software and HSM protection levels. The software protection level is for keys that are protected by the software security module. HSM refers to keys that...
