US Patent 11176253 HSM self-destruction in a hybrid cloud KMS solution

A method includes: federating, by a computer device, a proxy hardware security module from a physical hardware security module; storing, by the computer device, the proxy hardware security module; receiving, by the computer device, a first one of a plurality of periodic identifying communications from the physical hardware security module; and erasing, by the computer device, the proxy hardware security module as a result of the computer device not receiving a second one of the plurality of periodic identifying communications.