Data centers are changing as part of what is likely to be a decade-long or lengthier shift. That evolution involves data centers becoming more distributed, more segmented, and more abstracted, as Rich Mogull, CEO of Securosis, noted in a webinar that’s now available on demand. And that, he said, means organizations need to implement key management strategies – because ad hoc efforts on this front are not sustainable.

Mogull was one of two featured speakers during the “Evolving Encryption Key Management Best Practices for the Data Center” webinar, which was sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The other webinar presenter was Nathan Turajski, senior product manager with HPE Data Security.

Data centers are becoming more distributed because most organizations have more than one data center, they may be leveraging collocated facilities, and they may need to be distributed to meet compliance requirements in various parts of the world, said Mogull, a former Gartner (News - Alert) analyst. Data centers are becoming more segmented, he continued, to address compliance and security concerns. And, he added, data centers are becoming more abstracted due to the rise of the cloud and virtualization.

HPE Data Security’s Turajski added that we’re seeing a perfect storm develop in light of the rise of breaches; new compliance requirements; and the need for multivendor support, reliable defenses, and a trusted approach. To prepare for and survive this storm, he indicated, organizations need to create strategies to keep themselves safe. Encrypting storage and servers and leaving the keys within the same device, he added, is akin to leaving your house unlocked or your keys under the welcome mat. A better way, he said, is to implement the HPE Enterprise Secure Key Manager.

That solution has distributed clustered capability to manage keys, offers a centralized view to manage keys, can separate the keys from data, and is fully standards-based.