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IBM Key Protect vs OpenStack Barbican

IBM Key Protect

ibm.com

OpenStack Barbican

docs.openstack.org

Side by side

FigureIBM Key ProtectOpenStack Barbican
Price from—Free
Free plan—Yes
Free trial——
Open source——
WebYes—
Linux—Yes
API—Yes
Self-hosted—Yes
Plans published31
Spec score · Key Management Software6.0 (#17)7.4 (#10)
Spec score · Encryption Key Management Software6.0 (#17)7.6 (#9)

Plans

IBM Key Protect

  • StandardPriced on request
  • Cross-region resiliencyPriced on request
  • DedicatedPriced on request

IBM Key Protect pricing →

OpenStack Barbican

  • Open source BarbicanFree

OpenStack Barbican pricing →

In their own words

IBM Key Protect

IBM Key Protect has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

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OpenStack Barbican

OpenStack Barbican is the OpenStack Key Manager service for storing, provisioning, and managing secrets such as keys, certificates, passwords, and raw binary data. Its barbican-api component provides an OpenStack-native REST API for managing secrets; barbican-worker and barbican-keystone-listener are also part of the service. The listener manages Barbican’s database records for Keystone projects when those projects are deleted. A plugin architecture lets operators connect software secret stores or hardware such as HSMs. Documented options include KMIP, Dogtag, and Vault secret-store plugins, as well as PKCS#11 crypto plugins. With PKCS#11, master encryption and HMAC keys can reside in an HSM. Operators can develop plugins for storage, generation, and event handling, though support status may be stable, experimental, or out-of-tree. The default Simple Crypto plugin stores its single encryption key in plaintext in barbican.conf, so service-node access must be restricted carefully. Container ACL settings do not carry over to associated secrets, and ACL functionality requires Keystone integration. Barbican is free under Apache 2.0; installation guidance assumes a working OpenStack deployment.

Visit docs.openstack.org