Purging keys manually

A deleted key becomes purged automatically after 90 days of the deletion. If you want to purge a key before it gets automatically purged, make sure that you are assigned the KMS Key Purge role for your Hyper Protect Crypto Services instance. A key can be purged manually only after it is deleted for 4 hours.

Before you purge keys, make sure that you understand the concept of deleting and purging keys and review the considerations.

To manually purge a key, you need to be assigned the KMS Key Purge role. Even a Manager cannot purge a key. For more information about service access roles, see IAM service access roles.

Purging keys in the UI

If you prefer to purging a key by using a graphical interface, you can use the UI by completing the following steps:

Log in to the UI.
Go to Menu > Resource list to view a list of your resources.
From your IBM Cloud resource list, select your provisioned instance of Hyper Protect Crypto Services.
On the KMS keys page, use the Keys table to browse the keys in your service.
Select the key that you want to purge and make sure that the state is Destroyed. Click the Actions icon to open a list of options for the key.
From the options menu, click Purge key.
Check the box to confirm the action and click Purge key.

You are not able to purge a key if you perform the purging action in 4 hours after you delete the key.

Purging keys with the API

You can purge a deleted key by making a DELETE call to the following endpoint:

https://api.<region>.hs-crypto.cloud.ibm.com:<port>/api/v2/keys/<key_ID>/purge

Retrieve your service and authentication credentials to work with keys in the service.
Retrieve the ID of the key that you want to delete.

You can find the ID for a key in your service instance by retrieving a list of your keys, or by accessing the UI.

Run the following cURL command to permanently delete the key and the contents.

curl -X DELETE \
  "https://api.<region>.hs-crypto.cloud.ibm.com:<port>/api/v2/keys/<key_ID>/purge" \
  -H "authorization: Bearer <IAM_token>" \
  -H "bluemix-instance: <instance_ID>" \
  -H "x-kms-key-ring: <key_ring_ID>" \
  -H "prefer: <return_preference>"

Replace the variables in the example request according to the following table.

Table 1. Describes the variables needed to purge keys with the API
Variable	Description
`region`	Required. The region abbreviation, such as `us-south` or `au-syd`, that represents the geographic area where your Hyper Protect Crypto Services instance resides. For more information, see Regional service endpoints.
`port`	Required. The port number of the API endpoint.
`key_ID`	Required. The unique identifier for the key that you would like to delete.
`IAM_token`	Required. Your IBM Cloud access token. Include the full contents of the `IAM` token, including the Bearer value, in the cURL request. For more information, see Retrieving an access token.
`instance_ID`	Required. The unique identifier that is assigned to your Hyper Protect Crypto Services instance. For more information, see Retrieving an instance ID.
`key_ring_ID`	Optional. The unique identifier of the key ring that the key belongs to. If it is not specified, Hyper Protect Crypto Services searches for the key in every key ring that is associated with the specified instance. Therefore, it is suggested to specify the key ring ID for a more optimized request. The key ring ID of keys that are created without an `x-kms-key-ring` header is `default`. For more information, see Managing key rings.
`return_preference`	A header that alters server behavior for `POST` and `DELETE` operations. When you set the `return_preference` variable to `return=minimal`, the service returns a successful deletion response. When you set the variable to `return=representation`, the service returns both the key material and the key metadata.

If the return_preference variable is set to return=representation, the details of the DELETE request are returned in the response entity-body.

The following JSON object shows a sample returned value.

{
    "metadata": {
      "collectionType": "application/vnd.ibm.kms.key+json",
      "collectionTotal": 1
    },
    "resources": [
      {
        "type": "application/vnd.ibm.kms.key+json",
        "id": "...",
        "name": "Root-key",
        "description": "...",
        "state": 5,
        "extractable": false,
        "keyRingID": "default",
        "crn": "...",
        "imported": false,
        "creationDate": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ",
        "createdBy": "...",
        "algorithmType": "AES",
        "algorithmMetadata": {
          "bitLength": 256,
          "mode": "CBC_PAD"
        },
        "algorithmBitSize": 256,
        "algorithmMode": "CBC_PAD",
        "lastUpdateDate": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ",
        "lastRotateDate": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ",
        "dualAuthDelete": {
          "enabled": true,
          "keySetForDeletion": true,
          "authExpiration": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ"
        },
        "deleted": true,
        "deletionDate": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ",
        "deletedBy": "...",
        "purgeAllowed": true,
        "purgeAllowedFrom": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ",
        "purgeScheduledOn": "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ"
      }
    ]
}

For a detailed description of the available parameters, see the Hyper Protect Crypto Services key management service API reference doc.

What's next

To learn more about deleting and purging keys, see About deleting and purging keys.