General availability: Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is now generally available across all regions (except Australia).Key Vault enables you to store and control cryptographic keys and other secrets used by cloud applications. With Key Vault, you can centrally manage your keys and secrets—taking them out of vulnerable locations like source code and plain text files. You can safeguard those keys and secrets by using FIPS-validated hardware security modules (HSMs). Key Vault enables you to manage the full lifecycle of your keys and secrets, and to grant applications controlled and audited access to those keys and secrets, helping you achieve and maintain regulatory compliance.You can use Key Vault within applications you develop and with applications that are preintegrated with Key Vault. By using Key Vault, you can centrally manage master keys used by CloudLink SecureVM for virtual machine encryption, by Brocade’s SteelApp traffic manager for TLS, and by the upcoming Azure disk encryption feature. You can deploy certificates to your Azure virtual machines from your key vault, and manage those certificates separately from the virtual machine image. Applications you write with the latest Azure Storage SDK can encrypt data automatically with a master key in your key vault.For more information, please visit the Key Vault page. Be sure to also view the introductory and Developer Quick Start videos.