Understanding Key Vault pricing tiers
The first step to protecting sensitive application secrets in Azure is to create a Key Vault resource in an Azure region of our choice. This is the resource that stores our secrets, keys, and certificates. When we create this resource, we need to specify the pricing tier that we want. The pricing tier that we select defines the capabilities that are available for us to use. Azure Key Vault has two pricing tiers – the standard tier and the premium tier.
The main difference between these two tiers is this: the standard tier supports only software-protected keys while the premium tier supports HSM-protected keys.
Note
Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are special hardware that can be used to perform cryptographic operations in a secure environment.
The key advantage of using the premium tier is that HSM keys offer stronger protection against tampering. HSM-protected keys in premium tier vaults are backed by nCipher HSMs, which...
