BYOK (bring your own key)
BYOK (bring your own key) means you supply your own keys to a third-party tool. In AI tools it usually means your own model provider API key, so requests run on your account; in cloud security it means encryption keys you control.
Why it matters for companies
With provider BYOK you keep your own contract and terms with each model provider, and you also keep the work: keys, quotas, rate limits and invoices per provider, for every tool that holds a key.
With encryption BYOK you can revoke access to stored data by revoking the key. Ask a vendor which of the two it means before comparing offers.
Example
A team pastes its own Anthropic API key into a coding tool. Usage is billed to the team's Anthropic account, and the team's own Anthropic rate limits apply to every developer using the tool.
How Standard Compute handles it
Standard Compute issues its own keys, one per person or app, so there are no provider keys to hand out, store or rotate.
To decide which providers may handle your data, use a provider allow-list.