● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportMedium impact1 neutral
NICE Actimize Reduces AWS KMS Costs by 77% with Custom Key Caching for Multi-Tenant Encryption
Key points
- NICE Actimize faced high AWS KMS costs due to millions of duplicate API calls.
- They achieved a 77% cost reduction by optimizing encryption key caching.
- The solution maintains per-tenant encryption and security in a regulated environment.
- The approach is relevant for multi-tenant SaaS and high-throughput systems.
Addressing High KMS Costs in Event-Driven Systems
NICE Actimize, a provider of financial crime detection solutions, encountered significant cost and performance issues with its global-scale, event-driven platform on AWS. The problem stemmed from millions of duplicate API calls to AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for encryption and decryption operations, driven by processing millions of encrypted messages daily across hundreds of tenants.
Custom Caching Solution for Per-Tenant Encryption
To mitigate these issues, NICE Actimize re-evaluated its approach to caching encryption keys. By implementing a custom caching solution, the company successfully reduced its AWS KMS costs by 77%. This was achieved while upholding strict security guarantees and maintaining cryptographic isolation for each tenant's data, a critical requirement in regulated financial services environments.
The Cache Stampede Problem in Multi-Tenant Architectures
The core challenge addressed was the "cache stampede problem," which arises when envelope encryption is used in high-concurrency, multi-tenant architectures. In such setups, each tenant's data must be encrypted with separate keys to ensure that a compromise of one tenant's key does not affect others. This requirement, combined with high message volumes in event-driven systems using services like Amazon MSK and Amazon SQS, generates a massive volume of encryption and decryption requests.
Applicability and Impact
The custom caching approach developed by NICE Actimize, alongside the AWS-recommended hierarchical keyring pattern, offers solutions for managing high KMS API volumes. These patterns are particularly relevant for multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) environments and other high-throughput systems where per-tenant encryption is essential and generates substantial KMS API traffic.
✨ This summary was generated by AI from the outlets' reporting listed below. It is not independently verified and may contain errors — check the original sources. How BrevFeed works →
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Reporting from
NICE Actimize, a financial crime detection platform, reduced its AWS Key Management Service (KMS) costs by 77% by implementing a custom caching solution for encryption keys in its multi-tenant, event-driven system. This approach addresses the "cache stampede problem" in high-concurrency environments while maintaining per-tenant encryption isolation and security guarantees.