Techniques for establishing one or more end-to-end secure channels in a data center are provided. A method according to these techniques includes obtaining, at a secure module (SM) associated with a virtual machine (VM) operating on a node of the data center, a VM-specific signature key for the VM from a Hardware Security Module (HSM), and performing a cryptographic signing operation at the SM associated with establishing an end-to-end secure channel between the VM and another networked entity using the VM-specific signature key responsive to a request from the VM.