IMPORTING CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS INTO KEY VAULTS

Techniques are provided to import a cryptographic key into a key vault in which an application programming interface for the key vault does not support importing existing cryptographic keys into the key vault. A key management system obtains a cryptographic key from a first key vault. The cryptographic key includes a key value and attributes which describe the cryptographic key. The key management system imports the cryptographic key into a second key vault by generating a surrogate key in the second key vault which corresponds to the cryptographic key. The surrogate key includes a key attribute having a value which corresponds to the key value of the cryptographic key.