The Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) tries to establish a single, comprehensive protocol for the communication between enterprise key management systems and encryption systems. By using a consolidated protocol, organizations will be able to simplify key management and reduce operational cost significantly. The KMIP standards efforts are governed by OASIS

OASIS (organization)

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards...

.

Current Status

The OASIS KMIP specification was voted on by members of the KMIP technical committee. It was formally ratified on October 1, 2010.http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/201010/msg00000.html

The latest official version of the specification is located here: OASIS KMIP v1.0 Specification

At the RSA conference in 2010 and again in February 2011 a group of vendors demonstrated interoperability: http://events.oasis-open.org/home/securitydemosrsa/2011/kmip

The use case examples for KMIP which outlines how messages are formatted and communicated between a KMIP client and a KMIP server in a variety of formats is located here: http://interop.cryptsoft.com/kmip_uc/

A number of vendors have released updates to existing key management products to support KMIP.

A number of vendors have announced planned release dates for updates to their existing key management products to support KMIP.

History

KMIP was initially submitted to OASIS

OASIS (organization)

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards...

 for standardization on February 12, 2009.

See Also

• Encryption
  Encryption
  In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
  
  
• IEEE P1619.3 Key Management
• Key (cryptography)
  Key (cryptography)
  In cryptography, a key is a piece of information that determines the functional output of a cryptographic algorithm or cipher. Without a key, the algorithm would produce no useful result. In encryption, a key specifies the particular transformation of plaintext into ciphertext, or vice versa...
  
  
• Key management
  Key management
  Key management is the provisions made in a cryptography system design that are related to generation, exchange, storage, safeguarding, use, vetting, and replacement of keys. It includes cryptographic protocol design, key servers, user procedures, and other relevant protocols.Key management concerns...