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NIST 800-53 SC-12 CompTIA Security+ 1.4 ISC2 CISSP 3.6 CompTIA SecurityX 2.7
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Key Storage

Cryptographic key management is essential to maintaining data security, covering the use of hardware and software solutions to store and protect keys across various systems and environments. Key management systems, including Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) and Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), provide structured approaches to securing cryptographic keys at scale.

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About this video

Cryptography is a foundational security control used to protect data both at rest and in transit. Encryption transforms readable data into a protected format, and decryption reverses that process — both operations depend entirely on cryptographic keys. Because those keys are the mechanism that grants access to protected data, securing them is a critical responsibility in any environment that handles sensitive information. For individual users, a password manager can serve as a basic key storage solution. However, in enterprise and multi-system environments, keys must support a wide range of use cases — from servers and hard drives to laptops, applications, and network traffic — making a more scalable and structured approach necessary. Key Management Systems (KMS) provide the framework for generating, storing, distributing, and retiring cryptographic keys securely across an organization. Several dedicated technologies exist to address this need. A Hardware Security Module (HSM) is a physical device, often installed as a card within a server, that stores cryptographic keys in tamper-resistant hardware and makes them available for encryption and decryption operations as needed. Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) are another hardware-based option, typically integrated directly into a device's motherboard. Virtual HSMs extend similar capabilities to cloud and software-defined environments, offering flexibility without sacrificing key protection. Together, these solutions form the core of a robust cryptographic key management strategy.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Cryptographic Key Management

Aligned to

NIST 800-53
SC-12 Cryptographic Key Establishment and Management
CompTIA Security+
1.4 Explain the importance of using appropriate cryptographic solutions.
ISC2 CISSP
3.6 Select and determine cryptographic solutions
CompTIA SecurityX
2.7 Given a scenario, implement the appropriate hardware security technologies and techniques.

Key terms

Hardware Security Module
HSM
A Hardware Security Module is a tamper-resistant physical device that safeguards and manages cryptographic keys, performs encryption operations, and provides a hardened environment for certificate authority operations and high-assurance key storage.
Trusted Platform Module
TPM
Trusted Platform Module is a dedicated hardware security chip embedded in devices that provides a hardware root of trust for secure boot, cryptographic key storage, and platform attestation, protecting sensitive keys from software-level compromise.
Encryption
The process of converting readable data into an unreadable format using an algorithm and key to prevent unauthorized access.
Cryptography
The practice of securing information by transforming it into an unreadable format using mathematical algorithms.
Key Exchange
A method used to securely share cryptographic keys between parties over an insecure channel.
Public Key Infrastructure
PKI
A framework of hardware, software, policies, and standards used to create, manage, and distribute digital certificates.

Topics

Cryptography Key Management Hardware Security Module Trusted Platform Module Data Security

Transcript

One thing that gives us access into things is cryptography keys, and so we want to make sure that we keep our cryptography keys very safe. So in this lesson let's talk about a few.

Why keys need to be secure

We use cryptography to encrypt data. We encrypt data to keep it secure, whether that data is being stored somewhere like disk drives, or in transit, whether it's our communication that's going back and forth. But in order to encrypt and then decrypt something, we have to use keys. And so we will use keys, but those keys need to be secure.

A password manager helps us store passwords. We could actually store our keys inside the password manager. That's great if I'm the only one that needs access to these keys, but there's many times that these keys are used for various purposes and we need to manage these keys in a different way. These keys could be used on servers, on hard drives, on the different laptops or different systems here, maybe it's for software. They can be used in a lot of different scenarios. So how do we keep these keys safe?

Key management systems

There are different key management systems out there that allow us to manage these keys. Here's just a few of the examples of it. We could use a hardware security module, or HSM, or trusted platform module, which is TPM. There are also virtual HSMs. So there are different mechanisms that we can use to keep these keys safe and manage these keys.

Hardware security module

One of those examples is the hardware security module. A hardware security module is a piece of hardware. It could be something that we actually install on a server, so we would install it, maybe it's a card that we'd slip into the server, that would store our keys. Now that server would have access to those keys and be able to utilize them when it needed to. Now we can start encrypting things like traffic, or maybe the data.

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