Thales released Wednesday a new version of CipherTrust Monitor, its monitoring tool that allows network operations teams to monitor their complete estate of Thales hardware security modules (HSMs), both payShield and nShield, 24×7 and from one centralized location, giving them instantaneous visibility into alerts, tamper attempts, real-time status and capacity.
CipherTrust Monitor can now monitor both Thales payShield and Thales nShield HSMs through a single pane of glass. Additional capabilities of CipherTrust Monitor 2.0 include enhanced monitoring and displays as well as a new auditor role, improving separation of duties.
With these challenges top-of-mind, Thales has created CipherTrust Monitor, a solution that allows IT personnel to proactively respond to potential issues and optimize operations – both important requirements with increasing internal and external IT security threats.
With its around-the-clock visibility, CipherTrust Monitor 2.0’s benefits include identifying performance bottlenecks to improve capacity planning; enabling immediate response to potential issues through comprehensive alerts; eliminating the need to physically access HSMs to retrieve important data; integrating seamlessly with existing HSM hardware and software configurations; and offering granular control over access to configuration and data through administrator, group manager and auditor roles.
HSMs are used to ensure the trust of critical business applications by managing the encryption keys that protect these applications and data. Typically, HSMs are housed in unattended, lights-out data centers or private-clouds in remote locations. This environment creates a challenge for customers who need to access their HSMs to ensure they are operating smoothly, without error and at optimum loading. The need to visit distant data centers can make data collection haphazard, complex and time-consuming, as well as costly.
“Encryption is a well-accepted best practice for securing sensitive data, with HSMs providing the root of trust for critical business applications by protecting and managing the encryption keys. CipherTrust Monitor 2.0 provides customers with the ability to monitor their HSMs from the convenience of their own office, dramatically reducing their ongoing key management costs,” said Peter Galvin, vice president of strategy at Thales e-Security. “The ability to remotely and centrally track HSM operational health, capacity and loading reduces the need to travel to manually retrieve important data. This together with audit logs that can be used as proof of regulatory compliance, brings convenience, cost reduction and reduced downtime.”
The latest version of CipherTrust Monitor will be available next quarter, and is priced according to the number of hosting workstations and number of HSMs being monitored.
