Introducing IBM Cloud Key Protect Dedicated: Built for high‑assurance cloud workloads

With rising pressure around data sovereignty, auditability and regional compliance, security leaders need absolute confidence that their encryption keys are theirs alone, unavailable to the cloud provider or any outside party.

IBM Cloud Key Protect Dedicated delivers exactly that: a single‑tenant, Keep Your Own Key model, isolation‑first deployment of IBM’s cloud‑native key management service with dedicated HSM domains and a strict, customer‑owned trust model.

Key Protect Dedicated provides high technical assurance by cryptographically isolating keys from cloud operators using dedicated HSMs and customer‑controlled access. This design ensures separation of duties and guarantees that only the customer can access or operate their encryption keys.

IBM Cloud Key Protect Dedicated delivers true key ownership and isolation for the most sensitive cloud workloads and meets regulatory compliance. Here’s how it’s built to achieve high assurance at scale.  

1. Dedicated by design, cloud‑native at scale. Key Protect Dedicated gives you a fully isolated stack with dedicated HSM domains for root‑of‑trust separation and per‑tenant boundaries—ideal for financial services, healthcare, public sector and other high‑assurance environments.
2. Keep Your Own Key (KYOK) = total key ownership. You maintain full control of master/root keys, complementing BYOK so you can meet strict sovereignty, audit and residency requirements with confidence.
3. Confidential containers with Intel® TDX. Key Protect is engineered to run cryptographic services in Red Hat OpenShift confidential containers, leveraging Intel TDX secure enclaves to help protect data in use, not just at rest or in transit.
4. HSM‑backed assurance. The service uses FIPS 140‑3 Level 4 HSMs (under NIST certification) to safeguard key material against physical and environmental threats—supporting stringent enterprise and regulatory requirements.
5. Hybrid‑first operations. A unified, cloud‑native control plane and API model is designed to work across tenancy models and vendors (including Utimaco, Thales, Marvell) to reduce lock‑in and simplify modernization.
6. Operational excellence built‑in. Kubernetes‑based scale, strong telemetry and DevSecOps automation improve resiliency and onboarding while keeping SLAs and observability front and center.

We’ve woven the most common patterns we see across regulated customers. Use these as starting points for your programs and reference architectures.

Banks and payment providers face fragmented key controls, insider/infrastructure threats, and regional obligations, like DORA, C5, ISMAP and others. With single‑tenant KYOK and dedicated HSM domains, you can centralize governance across payments, trading and analytics pipelines—bridging legacy and cloud while aligning to FS Cloud and PCI requirements.

The outcome: stronger control, cleaner audits, safer modernization.

Providers need consistent encryption across EHR, imaging, telehealth, and clinical AI—plus precise logs for HIPAA/HITRUST reviews. Key Protect Dedicated delivers per‑region deployments, single‑tenant key isolation and unified logging so you always know who can access what—and can prove it.

The outcome: simplified compliance, less audit friction, faster rollout of digital health services.

Gen AI pipelines span data lakes, vector stores and model repositories—often with inconsistent encryption and no single owner. Apply BYOK/KYOK across watsonx.ai and watsonx.data assets with dedicated, HSM‑backed keys to enforce lineage and residency while accelerating a pre‑approved RAG posture.

The outcome: governed AI with fewer security handoffs and clearer evidence.

AIX, DB2, SAP and backups often mix methods with no clear owner. With single‑tenant KYOK and dedicated HSM domains, secure LPAR migrations, SAP move‑to‑cloud and DR/backup operations—while keeping keys in the region you require.

The outcome: faster adoption of PowerVS with verifiable control and governance.

Use Key Protect Dedicated to standardize encryption for databases, object storage and containers—with dual authorization guardrails for sensitive actions like key deletion or master key ceremonies. Outcome: fewer misconfigurations, cleaner audits, and launch times that move from weeks to days.

Key Protect Dedicated gives organizations the freedom to move fast in the cloud—without giving up control of their keys, their boundaries or their trust.

Explore IBM Cloud Key Protect

Read documentation to start using the service