MANAGING GROUP KEYS

In an example, one or more cryptographic keys may be associated with a group. Any member of the group may use the key to encrypt and decrypt information, thereby allowing members of the group to share encrypted information. Domain controllers (DCs) maintain copies of the group's keys. The DCs may synchronize with each other, so that each DC may have a copy of the group's keys. Keys may have expiration dates, and any client connected to a DC may generate a new key when a key is nearing expiration. The various clients may create new keys at differing amounts of time before expiration on various DCs. DCs that store keys early thus may have time to propagate the newly-created keys through synchronization before other DCs are requested to store keys created by other clients. In this way, the creation of an excessive number of new keys may be avoided.