At 09:09 PM 6/2/2009, Mark Andrews wrote: > HSM's > are better than just having the private component of a > public key sitting on a disk somewhere but in most operational > enviornments they don't add that much more security to the > process. It depends on the HSM. For example, there are HSMs that allow you to program just about any policy you want - including the requirement to have at least N people agree that something needs to be signed. The size of "N" is chosen to balance need for accountability with that of usefulness. I.e. requiring 20 people to turn the keys to get something signed is probably not useful. Permitting 1 person to sign without further oversight is probably not enough accountability. So saying they don't add much more security is really a statement that might be correct under really bad management practices, but mostly isn't. For example, even a simple version of keeping the set of HSM PIN holders distinct from set of people allowed to physically access the HSM for signing provides a substantial amount of operational security. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf