Thales announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud that will accelerate the ability of enterprises to safely migrate sensitive data between public cloud, hybrid and private IT infrastructures. Together, the two companies will offer new capabilities that enable security teams to own and control their encryption keys while helping to fulfill heightened regulatory requirements amidst today's highly-distributed workforce. Building on a multi-year history of innovation around a variety of cloud security initiatives, Thales and Google Cloud will now empower customers to leverage the full potential of Google Cloud technology for sensitive workloads while gaining the external key management needed to control and secure data across hybrid cloud IT environments.

Securing the New IT Frontier: Hybrid Cloud

This collaboration marks a significant moment for organisations to finally seize full control of their data and encryption keys, especially as they pursue hybrid, multi-cloud strategies. Addressing both private and public cloud environments, Thales and Google Cloud will provide a turnkey solution that manages, brokers and stores encryption keys completely controlled by the customer, effectively enabling companies to move data assets to the cloud with confidence. As uncovered in the Thales 2020 Data Threat Report-Global Edition, this is increasingly becoming more critical as greater than half of the world's corporate data - of which 48% is sensitive - is stored in the cloud.

"New capabilities are critical to cloud migration and security, especially with such accelerated growth in this area," said Sunil Potti, VP and GM of Google Cloud Security. "True to our mission, we've forged this deeper relationship with Thales to further protect our customer's most sensitive information. Companies of all shapes and sizes are dealing with an extremely fluid and dynamic business environment where even the best lines of defence are constantly being battle tested. Together with Thales, we acknowledge the current set of circumstances and remain vigilant to provide customers with the most advanced solutions that address today's cybersecurity needs as well as those that are emerging on the horizon."

This collaboration greatly simplifies the security of moving to multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge-cloud environments - a journey more companies are making today to address the post-pandemic remote world. According to 451 Research, 62% of enterprises today are pursuing a hybrid IT strategy. In addition, by working with Thales to handle application and data security in the cloud, Google Cloud customers can now maintain strong data sovereignty with encryption key visibility and lifecycle management. Customers also can address heightened regulatory requirements stemming from recent data and privacy regulations.

"Our collaboration with Google Cloud truly embodies the technology leadership needed to place the control of data directly into the hands of our customers," said Sebastien Cano, SVP for Cloud Protection & Licensing at Thales. "Companies no longer need to put their sensitive data in untrusted environments and relinquish control of their coveted encryption keys. It has become abundantly clear that an evolution in data protection is taking place at a global level as security professionals work together to build a shared-responsibility security model between enterprise customers and providers. With this joint innovation effort, we're supporting organisations as they move to the cloud with confidence."

Establishing a Foundation of Trust in the Cloud

To help organisations benefit from this enhanced level of control of keys and cloud data, Thales has integrated its CipherTrust Key Broker service with Google Cloud External Key Manager (EKM). The CipherTrust Key Broker for Google Cloud EKM is available on Thales's Data Protection on Demand platform. By generating encryption keys using CipherTrust Key Broker, organisations can verify the origin and quality of the keys they are providing to the cloud provider, while maintaining the original version of the key outside of the Google Cloud environment. Organisations hold their master keys in a Thales Luna Cloud HSM, which acts as the trust anchor for the CipherTrust Key Broker solution. For more information download the CipherTrust Key Broker solution brief.