Key management

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Key management is a term used to describe two different fields; (1) cryptography, and (2) physical key management within building or campus access control.

In cryptography, key management includes all of the provisions made in a cryptosystem design, in cryptographic protocols in that design, in user procedures, and so on, which are related to generation, exchange, storage, safeguarding, use, vetting, and replacement of keys. There is a distinction between key management, which concerns keys at the users' level (i.e., passed between systems or users or both), and key scheduling which is usually taken to apply to the handling of key material within the operation of a cipher.

When referring to access control, physical key management refers to a system for managing the possession, location and use of mechanical (physical keys) within a building or campus, to aid in security and operations efficiency.

Appropriate and successful key management is critical to the secure use of every crypto system without exception. It is, in actual practice, the most difficult aspect of cryptography generally, for it involves system policy, user training, organizational and departmental interactions in many cases, coordination between end users, etc.

Many of these concerns are not limited to cryptographic engineering and so are outside a strictly cryptographic brief, though of critical importance. As a result, some aspects of key management fall between two stools as the cryptographers may assume this or that aspect is the responsibility of the using department or upper management or some such, while said department or upper management regard it all as being outside their concerns because 'technical', and so within the purview of the cryptographers.

[edit] See also

Public key infrastructure
NSA's Electronic Key Management System (EKMS)
Cryptographic key types
Assorted list of cryptographic key types
Physical key management

[edit] Organizations Supplying Key Management Solutions

Bell ID - ANDiS Key Management System
Futurex - Excrypt Key Management Products
nCipher - keyAuthority Key Management Products
Trusted Security Solutions, Inc.- Developers of the A98 initial ATM Key Establishment System.
Voltage - Voltage Security key management products (mainly for PCI DSS compliance)