Featuring Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey

Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey gives teams a way to separate sensitive data from the keys that protect it, while enforcing exactly how and when those keys can be used.

Keys are generated, stored, and used inside secure enclaves, with access gated by authentication and programmable policy. This allows teams to build recovery flows and distributed trust models without managing key infrastructure or exposing key material.

Developers can start quickly with a simple integration, or compose more advanced controls. In both cases, keys remain isolated, and protected by hardware-backed security.

Challenges when managing and storing encryption keys

Encryption is well understood. Key management is where systems break down. Security, usability, and compliance requirements converge quickly, and early design decisions are difficult to unwind.

In most systems, encryption keys and the data they protect live in the same environment, creating a single point of failure. Recovery introduces additional tension, forcing teams to choose between user-managed approaches that increase friction and backend-controlled models that introduce custodial risk.

Access control is typically enforced in application code, where misconfigurations can expose key material. At the same time, compliance requirements like quorum approvals and audit logging add operational overhead, often without purpose-built infrastructure to support them.

Together, these constraints make key management less about encryption itself and more about how risk, access, and recovery are structured across the system.

How Encryption Key Storage works with Turnkey 

Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey separates data, keys, and access into distinct layers, with enforcement handled at the infrastructure level rather than in application code.

Here’s a typical flow:

1. Create an encryption key
Generate a keypair in Turnkey, ensuring  the private key is stored inside secure enclaves.

2. Encrypt and store data
Your application encrypts sensitive data, such as a wallet recovery bundle, locally and stores it in your infrastructure.

3. Keep the key isolated
Turnkey keeps the encryption key fully isolated inside secure enclaves, never exposing it to your application or storing it alongside your data.

4. Request access when needed
When decryption is required, the user authenticates through your app. Turnkey evaluates the request against configured policies.

5. Decrypt on the client
If approved, Turnkey releases the key through a controlled export, and your application decrypts the data locally in milliseconds.

This model keeps data, keys, and access control separated, while enabling secure, real-time recovery flows.

The benefits of Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey 

Encryption key storage must do more than isolate keys. It must define how risk is distributed, how access is enforced, and how recovery is handled without introducing custodial exposure.

Turnkey provides the infrastructure to support these requirements.

Multi-party risk distribution
Sensitive data and encryption keys are held in separate systems. Your infrastructure stores encrypted data, while Turnkey secures the key inside enclaves.

Policy-controlled authorization
All key access is enforced by Turnkey’s policy engine at the infrastructure layer. Teams can define exactly when and how keys can be used or exported, including quorum approvals, scoped permissions, and conditional access, without relying on application code.

User-authenticated recovery
Key access is tied directly to user authentication. Support for passkeys, OAuth, email OTP, SMS OTP, and API keys allows teams to build recovery flows that are both secure and familiar, without requiring users to manage seed phrases or backup keys.

Verifiable enclave security
Keys are generated, stored, and used inside hardware-backed trusted execution environments. Key material is never exposed outside the enclave boundary, and all operations are executed within a verifiable, isolated environment designed to enforce security guarantees by default.

Together, these capabilities define a model where key management becomes an infrastructure property rather than simply an application responsibility.

Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey: Security built for scale

Encryption Key Storage with Turnkey gives consumer apps, DeFi platforms, and enterprise teams the ability to protect sensitive data without creating concentrated risk or forcing users into complex recovery steps.

Teams get hardware-backed key isolation, flexible authentication, and configurable access policies in a single infrastructure layer. 

They decide what to encrypt, where to store it, and how to use the key when access is needed. Turnkey handles the rest: secure storage, authentication enforcement, policy evaluation, and audit logging.

If you're ready to build encryption key storage into your product, explore the documentation to see how quickly you can get started and begin designing a recovery flow tailored to your users.

Start building with Turnkey today.

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