Cryptomathic Blog

A key block is a unique cryptographic structure designed to protect cryptographic keys during transport over potentially insecure networks. A team around Mohammed M Atalla invented the concept of the key block with his Atalla key block. This solved several issues created by “key variants” that were then used for transporting keys.

On April 19, 2022, information about a severe vulnerability in recent versions of Java shook up the security community.

This article addresses some of the challenges of symmetric cryptography as applied in banks, describing how it works and what are its unbeaten advantages as opposed to asymmetric cryptography.

Her we look at what it means to “bring your own key”, “control your own key” and “hold your own key” and what the differences are between these three methods for protecting business-critical cryptographic keys used to encrypt data in the cloud.

This article looks at some reasons for popularity of the IBM mainframe platform in the banking sector and touches upon its limitation for cross-vendor encryption and key management.

Among all the various key block formats, the TR-34 format is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated formats.

The TR-34 norm is an implementation of the X9.24-2 norm. It proposes a realistic and efficient way of exchanging symmetric keys using asymmetric cryptography. This is basically a certificate-based Remote Key Loading (RKL) protocol. 

This article proposes answers to a series of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about key blocks.

One aspect of key management is dealing with what happens when a symmetric cryptographic key is no longer needed. The section ‘Key Replacement, Destruction and Archiving’ within ANSI X9.24-1-2017 explains what needs to happen.

Client behaviors and expectations are behind the transformation that is currently reshaping the new banking security architecture. While clients want more digital banking and financial services, they still look to a bank’s physical presence as one that is symbolic for building trust, credibility, and the reputation of the institution.