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Data encryption in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online

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Understand the basic elements of encryption for data security in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online.

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Security and data encryption in Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is a highly secure environment that offers extensive protection in multiple layers: physical data center security, network security, access security, application security, and data security. This article specifically focuses on the in-transit and at-rest encryption side of data security for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online.

Watch how data encryption works in the following video.

Encryption of data in transit

In OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, there are two scenarios in which data enters and exits the data centers.

  • Client communication with the server Communication to OneDrive for Business across the Internet uses SSL/TLS connections. All SSL connections are established using 2048-bit keys.

  • Data movement between data centers The primary reason to move data between data centers is for geo-replication to enable disaster recovery. For instance, SQL Server transaction logs and blob storage deltas travel along this pipe. While this data is already transmitted by using a private network, it is further protected with best-in-class encryption.

Encryption of data at rest

Encryption at rest includes two components: BitLocker disk-level encryption and per-file encryption of customer content.

BitLocker is deployed for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online across the service. Per-file encryption is also in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365 multi-tenant and new dedicated environments that are built on multi-tenant technology.

While BitLocker encrypts all data on a disk, per-file encryption goes even further by including a unique encryption key for each file. Further, every update to every file is encrypted using its own encryption key. The keys to the encrypted content are stored in a physically separate location from the content. Every step of this encryption uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys and is Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 compliant. The encrypted content is distributed across a number of containers throughout the data center, and each container has unique credentials. These credentials are stored in a separate physical location from either the content or the content keys.

For additional information about FIPS 140-2 compliance, see FIPS 140-2 Compliance.

File-level encryption at rest takes advantage of blob storage to provide for virtually unlimited storage growth and to enable unprecedented protection. All customer content in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online will be migrated to blob storage. Here's how that data is secured:

  1. All content is encrypted, potentially with multiple keys, and distributed across the data center. Each file to be stored is broken into one or more chunks, depending its size. Then, each chunk is encrypted using its own unique key. Updates are handled similarly: the set of changes, or deltas, submitted by a user is broken into chunks, and each is encrypted with its own key.

  2. All of these chunks—files, pieces of files, and update deltas—are stored as blobs in our blob store. They also are randomly distributed across multiple blob containers.

  3. The "map" used to re-assemble the file from its components is stored in the Content Database.

  4. Each blob container has its own unique credentials per access type (read, write, enumerate, and delete). Each set of credentials is held in the secure Key Store and is regularly refreshed.

In other words, there are three different types of stores involved in per-file encryption at rest, each with a distinct function:

  • Content is stored as encrypted blobs in the blob store. The key to each chunk of content is encrypted and stored separately in the content database. The content itself holds no clue as to how it can be decrypted.

  • The Content Database is a SQL Server database. It holds the map required to locate and reassemble all of the content blobs held in the blob store as well as the keys needed to decrypt those blobs.

Each of these three storage components—the blob store, the Content Database, and the Key Store—is physically separate. The information held in any one of the components is unusable on its own. This provides an unprecedented level of security. Without access to all three it is impossible to retrieve the keys to the chunks, decrypt the keys to make them usable, associate the keys with their corresponding chunks, decrypt any chunk, or reconstruct a document from its constituent chunks.