Data Security

HCP Terraform takes the security of the data it manages seriously. This table lists which parts of the HCP Terraform and Terraform Enterprise app can contain sensitive data, what storage is used, and what encryption is used.

HCP Terraform and Enterprise

Terraform Enterprise Specific

Vault Transit Encryption

The Vault Transit Secret Engine handles encryption for data in-transit and is used when encrypting data from the application to persistent storage.

Blob Storage Encryption

All objects persisted to blob storage are symmetrically encrypted prior to being written. Each object is encrypted with a unique encryption key. Objects are encrypted using 128 bit AES in CTR mode. The key material is processed through the Vault transit secret engine, which uses the default transit encryption cipher (AES-GCM with a 256-bit AES key and a 96-bit nonce), and stored alongside the object. This pattern is called envelope encryption.

The Vault transit secret engine's datakey generation creates the encryption key material using bit material from the kernel's cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator (CSPRNG) as the context value. Blob storage encryption generates a unique key for each object and relies on envelope encryption, so Vault does not rotate the encryption key material for individual objects. The root encryption keys within the envelope encryption scheme are rotated automatically by HCP Terraform every 365 days. These keys are not automatically rotated within TFE.