Shared file systems and methods ensuring high availability of cryptographic keys. The keys are encrypted with at least one shareable master key to generate corresponding encrypted cryptographic keys, which are stored in a key database in the shared file system. A master key manager with access to the key database is elected from among master key manager candidates and is assigned a common virtual address. All master key manager candidates have the shareable master key such that during a failover event the availability of the encrypted cryptographic keys is not interrupted as a new master key manager takes over the common virtual address from the previous master key manager. Additionally, a message authentication code (MAC) is deployed for testing the integrity of keys during their retrieval.