Thales updates Remote HSM Manager

Thales customers can now perform all management tasks for their hardware security modules (HSMs), including software updates and loading code and licences, remote from the data centre, providing signification reduction in operating costs.

Hardware security modules (HSMs) play a fundamental role in protecting payment transactions. They normally reside in secure data centres in a number of different locations making their management time consuming, costly and inconvenient. Thales Remote HSM Manager is a highly scalable solution that facilitates the secure remote management of HSMs. This allows routine tasks to be delegated to the lowest trusted entity and therefore largely eliminates the need for the most senior members of the security team to travel to data centres after the initial installation of the HSM. This latest update also allows both code and licences to be loaded remotely. This delivers significant time and cost saving opportunities for the security team, while still maintaining security audit compliance and complementing existing processes and procedures. A single central security team is able to manage multiple HSMs split between various data centres, all without the need to travel.

"For more than 20 years Thales has been at the forefront of security and payments technology securing more than 70 percent of the world's payment transactions," says Franck Greverie, Thales vice president in charge of information technology security activities. "Thales Remote HSM Manager further demonstrates this commitment, meeting the high availability and business continuity needs of our customers by giving them complete control of their HSMs 24x7, without any degradation of security or accountability."

Thales Remote HSM Manager is supported by payShield 9000 and HSM 8000 payment HSM families. The solution is fully compliant with key management standards such as those defined in the PCI PIN Security standard.