Data Protection and Encryption Questions

Design and practical application of controls to protect sensitive data with a primary focus on encryption and key management across cloud and on premises environments. Core areas include encryption at rest, encryption in transit, and encryption in use; selection and trade offs between symmetric and asymmetric algorithms and relevant protocols; standards based and application level techniques such as field level encryption and end to end encryption; client side and server side encryption patterns; envelope encryption and hardware backed key storage. Includes design and operational practices for key lifecycle management including secure key generation, secure storage, rotation, revocation, backup and recovery, high availability and disaster recovery, multi region and multi account deployments, and integration with hardware security modules and managed key vaults. Covers complementary techniques such as tokenization, format preserving encryption, and data masking, as well as identification and classification of sensitive data and sensitive data flows and consistent enforcement across databases, object storage, caches and message queues. Also includes transport layer protection and secrets management, performance and scalability trade offs of encryption and key rotation, audit logging and monitoring of encryption controls, incident response and breach handling for encrypted data, access controls and separation of duties around key access, and regulatory and compliance considerations including data residency and standards relevant to payment and personal data protection.