Table of Contents
Advertisement
Key Archival Process
Here are a few situations in which you might need to recover a end-entity's
encryption private key:
•
An employee loses the encryption private key (for example, after a disk crash
or by forgetting the password to the key file) and cannot read encrypted mail
messages.
•
An employee is on an extended leave, and you need access to an encrypted
document in his or her files.
•
An employee leaves the company, and company officials need to perform an
audit that requires gaining access to the employee's encrypted mail.
Where the Keys are Stored
If configured properly, the Data Recovery Manager, stores your end-entity's
encryption private keys automatically whenever the associated or connected
Registration Manager or Certificate Manager issues certificates to your users. The
Data Recovery Manager stores encryption private keys in a secure key repository
in its internal database; each key is stored as a key record.
The archived copy of the key remains encrypted (or wrapped) with the Data
Recovery Manager's storage key; see "Data Recovery Manager's Key Pairs and
Certificates" on page 215. It can be decrypted (or unwrapped) only by using the
corresponding private key, to which no individual has direct access. A
combination of one or more key recovery agents' passwords enables the Data
Recovery Manager to retrieve its private storage key and use it to decrypt and
recover an archived key. For details on how this process works, see "Key Recovery
Agents and Their Passwords" on page 205.
The Data Recovery Manager indexes stored keys by key number (or ID), owner
name, and a hash of the public key, allowing for highly efficient searching by name
or by public key. The key recovery agents have the privilege to insert, delete, and
search for key records. The search feature works like this:
•
When the key recovery agents search by the key ID, only the key that
corresponds to that ID is returned.
•
When the agents search by user name, all stored keys belonging to that owner
are returned.
•
When the agents search by the public key in a certificate, only the
corresponding private key is returned.
202
Netscape Certificate Management System Administrator's Guide • February 2003
Advertisement
Table of Contents
