How to securely manage public & private SSH keys in the cloud?

SSH greatly simplifies remote server access and increases login security. SloopEngine provides easy steps to implement secure SSH access to Amazon EC2 instances, Google Compute Engine instances, Azure Virtual Machines, OpenShift servers, on-premise servers, and even Docker containers, etc.

What is the need for a cloud-based SSH key management system?

Overall, it is not just about managing SSH keys; it's all about how to enable secure SSH access to servers without compromising the security of SSH keys. A large organization averagely maintains hundreds or thousands of servers running on production, staging, and development environments. If the SSH security of any server is compromised, it opens ways to exploit compliance problems. You can avoid SSH security issues only by implementing proper SSH key management.

How to choose a cloud-based SSH key management system?

Choosing an SSH key management is not an easy task because storing and retrieving the private SSH key data is critical. Here we list some important key factors to be consider before choosing an SSH key management system to manage your public and private SSH keys.

1. The servers should have block-level encryption enabled.
2. The private SSH key data must be encrypted and stored in a secured database.
3. The private SSH key not be stored in a flat-file at any cost.
4. Must allow managing SSH keys per environment.
5. Deploying the SSH key should be automated.
6. SSH key rotation options should be available.
7. It should be centralized and easily manageable.
8. Must have proper access management for team members.

SloopEngine has all the above factors built into it, so you can blindly give it a try. With SloopEngine, you can manage SSH keys per environment, per user, with built-in context-awareness.

Managing SSH keys & SSH access are two sides of the same coin

We discussed SSH key management more in this post, but we forgot to mention another crucial topic: SSH access management. SSH key management and SSH access management are two sides of the same coin. We cannot split both the functionalities separately. SloopEngine offers both SSH key management and SSH access management in the cloud. Signup on SloopEngine, onboard your team members, and start managing SSH keys and SSH access in the cloud. Please watch the SloopEngine demo video to know more about it.

Interested? Signup today for free! Thank you.