When migrating their business-critical applications and cryptography to the cloud, banks and financial institutions face a number of concerns. The push to adopt cloud computing for the sake of efficiency and innovation must be balanced with the responsibility to protect sensitive data and processes.

Key distribution is perhaps the most important and crucial aspect of the ANSI X9.24-1-2017 part 1 standard. But first, let us explain what cryptographic key distribution is.

The ANSI X9.24-1-2017 standard defines the requirements for the loading of key components or shares, and the loading of cleartext keys. The loading of encrypted keys is described in other parts of the standard.

In this article, we look at the process of key generation and key derivation as described by the ANSI X9.24-1-2017 standard. This process is mandatory for operations performed by the retail financial services industry.

The ANSI X9.24-1: 2017 standard requires the use of secure cryptographic devices (SCDs) in the context of symmetric key cryptography and refers to the ISO 13491-1 standard for the specifications that must be met for a device to be approved as an SCD. This article outlines and explains some of the aspects and requirements that both the X9.24-1-2017 and ISO 13491-1 mandate for SCDs that are used in retail financial services systems.

Today, financial institutions are driven by a strategic question: How can they embrace the benefits from the cloud’s flexible and scalable on-demand services, while perpetuating a trustworthy, banking-grade level of cryptographic security?

In June 2019, the PCI Security Standards Council issued an information supplement titled PCI PIN Security Requirement 18-3 – Key Blocks, which requires that encrypted symmetric keys be managed in structures called “Key Blocks.”

The ANSI X9.24-1-2017 norm details how symmetric cryptographic keys should be managed and handled by the relevant actors of the retail financial services companies. Here we outline the general techniques and methodologies that are required or suggested by the standard.

FIPS 140 (“Federal Information Processing Standard”) is a series of security standards published by the U.S. government that specify security requirements for the evaluation of cryptographic modules. This article explores various aspects of the latest release of FIPS 140-3.