Google Activates Automatic 128-bit Encryption for Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage has begun to automatically encrypts all data before it is written to disk, at no additional charge.   The company said the encryption is automatic, transparent and without performance penalty.  Google manages the cryptographic keys while providing key access controls and auditing logs.  Users also have the option of managing keys on their own.

Google Cloud Storage is using 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128) for all data and metadata, which is the same level of encryption that Google uses for its own encrypted data. The server-side encryption is already active for all new data written to Cloud Storage.

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/08/google-cloud-storage-now-provides.html

• Last week, Google announced Layer 3 load balancing for Compute Engine. This enables users to load-balance ingress network TCP/UDP traffic over a specific set of Compute Engine virtual machines (VMs) within the same region, thereby handling spikes in load without pre-warming. It also ensures that only healthy VMs are used to serve Internet requests through the use of HTTP-based health checks.