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Concept

Infisical can be used as a Key Management System (KMS), referred to as Infisical KMS, to centralize management of keys to be used for cryptographic operations like encryption/decryption.

By default your Infisical data such as projects and the data within them are encrypted at rest using Infisical’s own KMS. This ensures that your data is secure and protected from unauthorized access.

If you are on-premise, your KMS root key will be created at random with the ROOT_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable. You can also use a Hardware Security Module (HSM), to create the root key. Read more about HSM.

Keys managed in KMS are not extractable from the platform. Additionally, data is never stored when performing cryptographic operations.

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Workflow

The typical workflow for using Infisical KMS consists of the following steps:

  1. Creating a KMS key. As part of this step, you specify a name for the key and the encryption algorithm meant to be used for it (e.g. AES-GCM-128, AES-GCM-256).
  2. Encryption: To encrypt data, you would make a request to the Infisical KMS API endpoint, specifying the base64-encoded plaintext and the intended key to use for encryption; the API would return the base64-encoded ciphertext.
  3. Decryption: To decrypt data, you would make a request to the Infisical KMS API endpoint, specifying the base64-encoded ciphertext and the intended key to use for decryption; the API would return the base64-encoded plaintext.

Note that this workflow can be executed via the Infisical UI or manually such as via API.

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Guide to Encrypting Data

In the following steps, we explore how to generate a key and use it to encrypt data.

1

Creating a KMS key

Navigate to Project > Key Management and tap on the Add Key button.

Specify your key details. Here’s some guidance on each field:

  • Name: A slug-friendly name for the key.
  • Type: The encryption algorithm associated with the key (e.g. AES-GCM-256).
  • Description: An optional description of what the intended usage is for the key.

2

Encrypting data with the KMS key

Once your key is generated, open the options menu for the newly created key and select encrypt data.

Populate the text area with your data and tap on the Encrypt button.

If your data is already Base64 encoded make sure to toggle the respective switch on to avoid redundant encoding.

Copy and store the encrypted data.

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Guide to Decrypting Data

In the following steps, we explore how to use decrypt data using an existing key in Infisical KMS.

1

Accessing your key

Navigate to Project > Key Management and open the options menu for the key used to encrypt the data you want to decrypt.

2

Decrypting your data

Paste your encrypted data into the text area and tap on the Decrypt button. Optionally, if your data was originally plain text, enable the decode Base64 switch.

Your decrypted data will be displayed and can be copied for use.

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