Ceremonies Design for PKI's Hardware Security Modules

Abstract

Ceremonies are a useful tool to HSMs in PKI environments. They state operational procedures and usage scenarios. Their correct construction can lead to a safer operation. This paper presents basic ceremony procedures to manage the life cycle of cryptographic keys and ideas of requirements needed to assure security throughout the usage of ceremonies in the context of an HSM It presents ceremonies to make the implementing the OpenHSM protocols. OpenHSM protocol operational establishing basic building blocks that can be used by any PKI application based in an HSM. Our main contributions are the re-usage of ceremony phases and a survey on formal methods to verify them.