In various example embodiments, a system and method are provided for protection customer data collected at sensor nodes within a networked system. A key recovery module determines the encrypted sensor data in a request was encrypted with a certified public key associated with a first customer key-pair. The first customer key-pair represents a recovered private key. The key recovery module determines the private key associated with the first customer key-pair is encrypted with the private key associated with a second customer key-pair. The private key associated with the first customer key-pair is decrypted by using the private key associated with the second customer key-pair. The encrypted sensor data in the request is decrypted using the decrypted private key associated with the first customer key-pair.