Slack Enterprise Key Management

Who can use this feature?
  • Org Owners and Org Admins
  • Available on Enterprise plans

You can use Slack Enterprise Key Management (EKM) to control and get visibility into how your organization’s data is accessed in Slack. It is available as a security add-on for the Enterprise Grid and Enterprise+ plans, and is included on the GovSlack plan.

What to expect

  • Use your own encryption keys (stored in Amazon's Key Management Service) to encrypt messages and files.
  • To minimize disruption for members of your organization, you can revoke granular access to encryption keys. 
  • Org members can use Slack as normal, even if some data has restricted access.
  • With data residency for Slack, new EKM customers can choose to create and store encryption keys in a specific data region.


How Slack EKM works

Data encrypted with customer-controlled keys

The following categories of customer data will be encrypted at rest with keys stored in the customer’s AWS account:

  • Messages, canvases, and snippets
  • Files (ex., images, docs, clips, etc.) uploaded to the Slack Service
  • Search index of Customer Data
  • Messages and files generated by apps or bots (except Slackbot)
  • Sidebar custom sections
  • Any data collected by an app deployed to Slack's managed infrastructure, as well as the app's datastores, developer secrets, and logs


Data encrypted with Slack-controlled keys

The following categories of data may be encrypted at rest with keys generated and stored by Slack:

  • Slack member profiles, including custom statuses
  • Channel names, topics, descriptions, and bookmarks
  • File names
  • Workspace and channel membership information
  • Slackbot messages
  • Data used to measure seat count, usage, and revenue
  • Data used for analytics and to measure quality of service, ex. sanitized logs
  • IDs generated by Slack on behalf of the customer
  • Deal celebration data

Note: When you enroll in EKM, any existing data will be encrypted with customer-controlled keys.


Slack Connect

If external organizations are working together in Slack Connect, the shared contents are covered by EKM in the following ways:

  • Each organization’s messages will be encrypted with their EKM keys, if applicable.
  • The search index for Slack Connect channels with be duplicated and encrypted with each customer’s EKM keys.
  • If an organization is removed from a Slack Connect channel, they'll retain an archived copy if they have permission to post, invite, and more.

Ready to learn more? Contact our Sales team to get started.