Asset, Escrow Holder or Release Condition?

About this interactive

Keys have to be managed. A pre-shared key or a private key in the wrong hands is a disaster for confidentiality and integrity, and a lost key can lock you out of your own data. Key escrow is one way of managing who can get to a key, and when. Escrow is a legal idea first. A trusted third party holds an asset, and a contract lists the conditions under which it is released, and to whom. In a home sale, the buyer's deposit sits in an escrow account until the sale goes through, or comes back to the buyer if the deal falls apart as the contract allows. Businesses use it the same way. In the lesson's example, a software company stored its code with an escrow company so that a partner who depended on it would receive the code if the software company went out of business. Keys are assets too. With key escrow a key is turned over to a trusted third party and released to another party when the agreed conditions are met. The term is also used for technical solutions. BitLocker normally unlocks the drive with a key protected on the machine itself, which is no help if the machine fails. So its recovery key is also stored in a database. If the machine fails and the data is still needed, the recovery key can be fetched from that database, the key escrow.

What you'll learn

Break an escrow arrangement into its three parts: the asset (a key, code or money), the trusted third party that holds it, and the condition under which it is released
Recognize key escrow as a technical solution, such as a BitLocker recovery key stored in a database so encrypted data can still be reached if the machine fails

Aligned to

NIST 800-53

SC-12 Cryptographic Key Establishment and Management

CP-9 System Backup

NIST NICE

K0698 Knowledge of cryptographic key management principles and practices

S0486 Skill in implementing enterprise key escrow systems

CompTIA Security+

1.4 Explain the importance of using appropriate cryptographic solutions.

3.4 Explain the importance of resilience and recovery in security architecture

ISC2 CISSP

3.6 Select and determine cryptographic solutions

Key terms

Key Escrow: A system in which cryptographic keys are stored with a trusted third party and released only when specific conditions are met, ensuring continuity and access management.
Key Management: The administration of cryptographic keys throughout their lifecycle, including generation, storage, distribution, and destruction, to ensure secure cryptographic operations.
BitLocker: BitLocker is Microsoft Windows' built-in full-volume encryption feature that uses AES to protect data on drives, leveraging TPM hardware to bind encryption keys to a specific system configuration.
Private Key: A secret cryptographic key used in asymmetric encryption to decrypt data or create digital signatures.
Encryption: The process of converting readable data into an unreadable format using an algorithm and key to prevent unauthorized access.
Full Disk Encryption: Full Disk Encryption is a method of encrypting all data on a storage device at the hardware or software level, ensuring that data remains inaccessible if the device is lost or stolen without the proper authentication credentials or decryption key.

Topics

Key Escrow Key Management Interactive Categorize

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