Are there any best practice guidelines or pros/cons for using an HSM with the Issuing CA? Thank you, Paul

What vendor are you looking at? Would like to provide a vendor-specific answer. Brian

My organization has HSM devices already in house for other purposes, they are Thales nCipher net HSM devices. Thanks, Paul

You definitely want to implement the nCipher hsMs to protect the online issuing CAs. - Use module protection for the key protectino - If using 2008 or 2008 R2, implement the nCipher Security World Key Storage Provider - If you have a FIPS 140-2 level 3 security world, ensure that you have an OCS card in the HSM at all times (the CA service looks for LTfips at startup in the smart card reader). - Typically, you would use the same security world for both offline and online CAs - Typically, the issuing CA would act as the RFS server for the netHSMs HTH, Brian

Would it not be a good practice to isolate the Root CA and Policy CA Private Keys and store them separately(Offline) from the Issuing CA Private Key.Thanks.

On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 04:54:24 +0000, krymer wrote: Would it not be a good practice to isolate the Root CA and Policy CA Private Keys and store them separately(Offline) from the Issuing CA Private Key. Common practice when using nCipher HSMs is to use the same security world for the offline and only key material but to use different operator cards sets for the offline CAs and to secure the online CAs using module protection. Paul Adare MVP - Identity Lifecycle Manager http://www.identit.ca I bet the human brain is a kludge. -- Marvin Minsky

You are not familiar with nCipher HSMs. The encrypted private key material is stored on the local file system of the client, not within the HSM. When the private key is activated, it is within the FIPS 140-2 protection, and is destroyed when the last OCS card is removed from the smart card reader. As Paul stated, separate OCS cards are used to protect the offline CA private key material require K of N protection Brian

Brian, Paul, Our project is progressing and I have a few follow-up questions: 1.) Are there any limitations of using the HSM if the CA is virtual? 2.) You mentioned in your previous post that when a private key is active and the last OCS card is removed that the private key is destroyed. Are you saying that the private key within the security world is destroyed? I'm guessing that there is a way to reactive the private key once the OCS cards are reinserted? or is the private key permanently destroyed? 3.) If the encrypted private key material is stored on the local file system, how does the HSM protect the private key material? What prevents someone from attempting to gain access to or decrypt the locally stored private key? Thank you, Paul

I have used Virtual Environment to Install the following: 1. RootCA(Offline) Virtual - Private Key on HSM with K of N Protection - Hard Disk removed locked up in Safe 2. PolicyCA(Offline) Virtual - Private Key on HSM with K of N Protection - Hard Disk removed locked up in Safe 3. IssuingCA(Online) Virtual - Private Key on HSM with K of N Protection 4. Web Enrollment on a Separate Virtual Machine. The Virtual Environment and HSM are working fine. Thanks.