Encryption Key Management

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Encryption Components

Supported Key Management Services
Reasons to Use a Remote Key Management System
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
Procedure: Rotate Encryption Keys Using Mongo Shell
Delete a Data Encryption Key
Learn More

Queryable Encryption is generally available (GA) in MongoDB 7.0. To learn more, 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 (DEK)s
Customer Master Keys (CMK)s
Key Vault collections
Key Management System (KMS)

To learn more about keys and key vaults, see Keys and Key Vaults.

Supported Key Management Services

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

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

The default KMIP protocol version is 1.2. You can configure MongoDB to use KMIP version 1.0 or 1.1 in the MongoDB server configuration file.

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

Reasons to Use a Remote Key Management System

Using a remote Key Management System to manage your Customer Master Key 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 KMS

Manage a Data Encryption Key's Alternate Name

You can assign a Data Encryption Key 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 Data Encryption Key with an alternate name. Select the tab that corresponds to your driver language:

To learn more about dataKeyOpts and kmsProviders objects, see CSFLE 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 DEK 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 DEKs 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 each encrypted using a DEK specific to the individual document. The keys are assigned dynamically at runtime.

Procedure: Rotate Encryption Keys Using Mongo Shell

With version 1.5 and later of the Mongo Shell, you can rotate encryption keys using the rewrapManyDataKey method. The rewrapManyDataKey method automatically decrypts multiple data keys and re-encrypts them using a specified Customer Master Key. It then updates the rotated keys in the key vault collection. This method allows you to rotate encryption keys based on two optional arguments:

A filter used to specify which keys to rotate. If no data key matches the given filter, no keys are rotated. Omit the filter to rotate all keys in your key vault collection.
An object that represents a new CMK. Omit this object to rotate the data keys using their current CMKs.

The rewrapManyDataKey uses the following syntax:

keyVault = db.getKeyVault()
keyVault.rewrapManyDataKey(
   {
      "<Your custom filter>"
   },
   {
      provider: "<KMS provider>",
      masterKey: {
         "<dataKeyOpts Key>" : "<dataKeyOpts Value>"
      }
   }
)

To learn more about the dataKeyOpts object for your KMS provider, see Supported Key Management Services.

Delete a Data Encryption Key

You can delete a Data Encryption Key from your Key Vault collection using standard CRUD delete operations. If you delete a DEK, all fields encrypted with that DEK become permanently unreadable.

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 CSFLE Encryption Schemas.

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