Encryption Key Management

On this page

Encryption Components

Supported Key Management Services
Reasons to Use a Remote KMS
Manage a Data Encryption Key's Alternate Name
Create a Data Encryption Key with an Alternate Name
Use Key Alternate Names in an Automatic Encryption Schema
Delete a Data Encryption Key
Learn More

The next-generation Queryable Encryption feature is now in Public Preview. To learn more about Queryable Encryption, see Queryable Encryption.

In this guide, you can learn how to manage your encryption keys with a Key Management System (KMS) in your Client-Side Field Level Encryption (CSFLE)-enabled application.

Encryption Components

MongoDB uses the following components to perform Client-Side Field Level Encryption:

Data Encryption Keys (DEKs)
Key Vault collections
Customer Master Keys (CMKs)
Key Management System (KMS)

Your Data Encryption Key is the key you use to encrypt the fields in your MongoDB documents. Your DEK is stored in a document in a MongoDB collection called the Key Vault collection.

Your Customer Master Key is the key you use to encrypt your Data Encryption Keys. MongoDB automatically encrypts Data Encryption Keys using the specified CMK during Data Encryption Key creation.

The CMK is the most sensitive key in CSFLE. If your CMK is compromised, all of your encrypted data can be decrypted.

Use a Key Management System to store your Customer Master Key.

To learn more about the relationship between keys, see Keys and Key Vaults.

Important

Use a Remote Key Management Service Provider

Ensure you store your Customer Master Key (CMK) on a remote KMS.

To learn more about why you should use a remote KMS, see Reasons to Use a Remote KMS.

To view a list of all supported KMS providers, see the KMS Providers page.

Supported Key Management Services

Client-Side Field Level Encryption supports the following Key Management System (KMS) providers:

Amazon Web Services KMS
Azure Key Vault
Google Cloud Platform KMS
Any KMIP Compliant Key Management System
Local Key Provider (for testing only)

To learn more about these providers, including diagrams that show how your application uses them to perform Client-Side Field Level Encryption, see KMS Providers.

Reasons to Use a Remote KMS

Using a remote KMS to manage your Customer Master Key (CMK) has the following advantages over using your local filesystem to host the CMK:

Secure storage of the key with access auditing
Reduced risk of access permission issues
Availability and distribution of the key to remote clients
Automated key backup and recovery
Centralized encryption key lifecycle management

Additionally, for the following KMS providers, your KMS remotely encrypts and decrypts your Data Encryption Key, ensuring your Customer Master Key is never exposed to your CSFLE-enabled application:

Amazon Web Services KMS
Azure Key Vault
Google Cloud Platform KMS

Manage a Data Encryption Key's Alternate Name

You can assign a Data Encryption Key (DEK) alternate names to make the key easier to reference. Assigning alternate names allows you to perform the following actions:

Reference a DEK by different means than the _id field.
Dynamically assign DEKs at runtime.

Create a Data Encryption Key with an Alternate Name

Important

Prerequisite

Prior to adding a new key alternate name, you must create a unique index on the keyAltNames field. Client-Side Field Level Encryption depends on server-enforced uniqueness of key alternate names.

To learn how to create a unique index, see Unique Indexes.

The following example creates a DEK with an alternate name. Select the tab that corresponds to your driver language:

To learn more about dataKeyOpts and kmsProviders objects, see KMS Providers.

Use Key Alternate Names in an Automatic Encryption Schema

Encryption schemas contain user-specified rules that identify which fields must be encrypted and how to encrypt those fields. In your encryption rules, you can specify alternate key names name for the Data Encryption Key which encrypts your field.

You must refer to a key alternate name with a JSON pointer. A JSON pointer is a string prefixed with a "/" character that can be used to access a particular field value in the same or another document. Use JSON pointers to reference a field in your query or update document which contains the value of your key alternate name.

Important

Cannot Use Alternate Name for Deterministically Encrypted Field

You cannot reference a DEK by it's alternate name when encrypting a field with the deterministic encryption algorithm. To encrypt your field deterministically, you must specify the _id of the key you would like to use to encrypt your field.

Reference Key Alternate Name in an Encryption Schema

Consider the following encryption schema which encrypts the salary field:

{
  "<database>.<collection>": {
    "bsonType": "object",
    "properties": {
      "salary": {
        "encrypt": {
          "bsonType": "int",
          "keyId": "/fieldWithAltName",
          "algorithm": "AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Random"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The schema's keyId field contains a JSON pointer to reference the fieldWithAltName field within the documents being encrypted.

The following document's fieldWithAltName value is my-alt-name:

{
  "name": "Jon Doe",
  "salary": 45000,
  "fieldWithAltName": "my-alt-name"
}

The salary field is encrypted by the the Data Encryption Key that has the alternate name my-alt-name.

Dynamically Assign Keys at Runtime

You can use alternate key names to dynamically set the Data Encryption Key for a field at runtime. Use this functionality to encrypt individual documents with different Data Encryption Keys using the same encryption schema.

For example, consider the following documents:

{
    "name": "Jon Doe",
    "salary": 45000,
    "fieldWithAltName": "my-alt-name"
},
{
    "name": "Jane Smith",
    "salary": 70000,
    "fieldWithAltName": "my-other-alt-name"
}

You insert the preceding documents using a CSFLE-enabled client configured with the encryption schema from the previous example.

In the encryption schema, the salary.encrypt.keyId field contains a JSON pointer to the fieldWithAltName field of the inserted document. As a result, the salary fields in the two example documents are uniquely encrypted using Data Encryption Keys specific to the individual document. The keys are assigned dynamically at runtime.

Delete a Data Encryption Key

You can delete a DEK from your Key Vault collection using standard CRUD delete operations.

Tip

MongoDB Shell Specific Feature

The MongoDB shell allows you to delete a DEK by UUID using the keyVault.deleteKey() method as follows:

keyVault = db.getKeyVault()
keyVault.deleteKey(UUID("<UUID String>"))

To learn more about Key Vault collections see Key Vault Collections.

Learn More

For tutorials detailing how to set up a CSFLE-enabled application with each of the supported KMS providers, see the following pages:

To view additional examples of encryption schemas, see Encryption Schemas.

← Keys and Key Vaults Fields and Encryption Types →