lacework-global-304
Encrypt VM Disks for Critical VMs With Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) (Automated)
Profile Applicability
• Level 2
Description
Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) are a feature in Google Cloud Storage and Google Compute Engine. If you supply your own encryption keys, Google uses your key to protect the Google-generated keys used to encrypt and decrypt your data. By default, Google Compute Engine encrypts all data at rest. Compute Engine handles and manages this encryption for you without any additional actions on your part. However, if you wanted to control and manage this encryption yourself, you can provide your own encryption keys.
Rationale
By default, Google Compute Engine encrypts all data at rest. Compute Engine handles and manages this encryption for you without any additional actions on your part. However, if you wanted to control and manage this encryption yourself, you can provide your own encryption keys.
If you provide your own encryption keys, Compute Engine uses your key to protect the Google-generated keys used to encrypt and decrypt your data. Only users who can provide the correct key can use resources protected by a customer-supplied encryption key.
Google does not store your keys on its servers and cannot access your protected data unless you provide the key. This also means that if you forget or lose your key, there is no way for Google to recover the key or to recover any data encrypted with the lost key.
At least business critical VMs should have VM disks encrypted with CSEK.
Impact
If you lose your encryption key, you will not be able to recover the data.
Audit
From Console:
- Go to Compute Engine
Disks
by visiting: https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/disks. - Click on the disk for your critical VMs to see its configuration details.
- Ensure that
Encryption type
is set toCustomer supplied
.
From Command Line:
Ensure diskEncryptionKey
property in the below command's response is not null, and contains key sha256
with corresponding value
gcloud compute disks describe <DISK_NAME> --zone <ZONE> --format="json(diskEncryptionKey,name)"
Remediation
Currently there is no way to update the encryption of an existing disk. Therefore you should create a new disk with Encryption
set to Customer supplied
.
From Console:
- Go to Compute Engine
Disks
by visiting: https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/disks. - Click
Create Disk
. - Set
Encryption type
toCustomer supplied
. - Provide the
Key
in the box. - Select
Wrapped key
. - Click
Create
.
From Command Line:
In the gcloud compute tool, encrypt a disk using the --csek-key-file flag during instance creation. If you are using an RSA-wrapped key, use the gcloud beta component:
gcloud compute instances create <instance_name> --csek-key-file <example-file.json>
To encrypt a standalone persistent disk:
gcloud compute disks create <disk_name> --csek-key-file <example-file.json>
References
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/customer-supplied-encryption#encrypt_a_new_persistent_disk_with_your_own_keys
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/reference/rest/v1/disks/get
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/customer-supplied-encryption#key_file
Additional Information
Note 1: When you delete a persistent disk, Google discards the cipher keys, rendering the data irretrievable. This process is irreversible.
Note 2: It is up to you to generate and manage your key. You must provide a key that is a 256-bit string encoded in RFC 4648 standard base64 to Compute Engine.
Note 3: An example key file looks like this.
[
{
"uri": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-a/disks/example-disk",
"key": "acXTX3rxrKAFTF0tYVLvydU1riRZTvUNC4g5I11NY-c=",
"key-type": "raw"
},
{
"uri": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/global/snapshots/my-private-snapshot",
"key": "ieCx/NcW06PcT7Ep1X6LUTc/hLvUDYyzSZPPVCVPTVEohpeHASqC8uw5TzyO9U+Fka9JFHz0mBibXUInrC/jEk014kCK/NPjYgEMOyssZ4ZINPKxlUh2zn1bV+MCaTICrdmuSBTWlUPYzn==",
"key-type": "rsa-encrypted"
}
]