IBM's Public Cloud Is Secure Enough for Crypto Custodians

IBM's public cloud is secure enough to attract crypto custodians.

Announced Tuesday, Singapore-based custody provider Onchain Custodian has released the latest version of its hardware-based vault, hosted entirely on Big Blue's banking-grade public cloud.

Previously, IBM has offered cloud services to digital asset custodians on a hybrid basis, where certain servers guarding private encryption keys are held on-premise by the custodian, with other services run from data centers that are rented out and in remote locations.

This is the first time a custodian has felt comfortable outsourcing the entire key management and storage process to IBM's public cloud.

"Onchain has been using a pure public cloud model from day one," said Rohit Badlaney, executive director of IBM Z Cloud.

IBM itself has no access to private keys created and stored on its HyperProtect cloud.

Alexandre Kech, chief executive and co-founder of Onchain Custodian, said guarding keys in your own custom-built vaults might intuitively appear to be the safest method, but this isn't necessarily the case.

Onchain went live with a cold-storage-only v1 of its custody solution back in April 2019.

Onchain has managed to snag insurance from Lloyd's of London for its HSM-based "Warm" offering, a further positive sign from the London insurance market, following the recent announcement that Lloyd's has officially begun backing hot-wallet insurance policies.

Kech said Onchain used Lockton as its broker and found two Lloyd's underwriters supporting the policy.