Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

BYOK is a feature where your customer supplies and controls the encryption key used to protect their data in your product, instead of you generating and holding it. Typically the key lives in the customer's own cloud KMS (AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS, Azure Key Vault), and your app calls out to it to encrypt and decrypt. The security promise: the customer can revoke the key and instantly render their data unreadable, even to you — useful leverage for regulated or security-conscious buyers. For SaaS builders, BYOK is an advanced, upmarket ask that usually appears well after SSO and audit logs, often bundled into enterprise pricing. Practical note: it adds real operational complexity — every read and write now depends on an external KMS being reachable, and a revoked or rotated key can break your product for that tenant. Don't build it speculatively; wait until a concrete enterprise deal actually requires it. A stricter variant, HYOK, keeps keys entirely on customer infrastructure.