Customer-managed key

How it works

The store encrypts and decrypts with a key in the customer's key service. Disabling the key stops reads. This is not zero-knowledge: the store uses the key at request time. It is stronger than a provider-owned key you cannot disable.

A bucket encrypts with a customer key. During an incident they disable the key. Downloads fail within minutes. A provider-default key would have kept serving. They re-enable after containment.

How it differs

Customer-managed is not client-side encryption. The service still sees plaintext in memory when it serves a GET.

A deleted key can mean a deleted archive.

Govern delete separately from disable.

On the ticket

• The practical close is a log line: time, actor, byte count, result.
• Without that line the transfer is a story.
• With it, the next person can see whether this door did what the ticket claimed.
• If the path is shared, say so in the partner profile so a later change does not silently pick a different limit, key, or region.
• On a real ticket, write down the door, the byte count, and the clock.
• For customer managed key, that means naming the host or bucket, the expected size, and the time the other side must have a complete file.
• A progress bar is not that record.
• A 200 response that arrives before the complete call is not that record.
• If a retry is allowed, say how many and whether it resumes.
• If a person must approve the send, name the person.
• Partners who receive customer managed key files should match on hash or size before they import.
• A same-length corrupt file passes a size check and fails a hash.
• Keep the published hash off the only channel an attacker can edit, or treat it as a corruption check rather than a substitution check.
• When the path changes, new key, new region, new cap, update the profile the same day so the next run does not use a stale limit.