Leveraging Azure Key Vault as part of Extensible key management (EKM) in SQL Server provides enhanced security, simplified key management, compliance support, and seamless integration with Azure services.
With the release of EKM using Azure Key Vault for SQL Server on Linux , you can benefit from centralized key storage and streamlined operations while maintaining data security and compliance. This feature allows you to manage encryption keys outside of SQL Server using Azure Key Vaults and is available for SQL Server 2022 CU12 onwards.