Identify Protection Mechanisms

[jayce21-ms]

Description

When initiating cryptographic protections for information, the strongest algorithm and key size that is appropriate for providing the protection should be used to minimize costly transitions. However, it should be noted that selecting some algorithms or key sizes that are unnecessarily large might have adverse performance effects

Certain protective measures may be taken to minimize the likelihood or consequences of a key compromise. The following procedures are usually involved:

Best Practices

• In general, a single key should be used for only one purpose, e.g., encryption, authentication, key wrapping, random number generation, or digital signatures.
• Limit the amount of time a symmetric or private key is in plaintext form.
• Preventing humans from viewing plaintext symmetric and private keys.
• Restricting plaintext symmetric and private keys to physically protected containers. This includes key generators, key-transport devices, key loaders, cryptographic modules, and key-storage devices.
• Using integrity checks to ensure that the integrity of a key or its association with other data has not been compromised.
• Provide a cryptographic integrity check on the key (e.g., using a MAC or a digital signature).
• Destroy keys as soon as they are no longer needed.
• Store key information in some Secure Processor or TPM that way if a reverse engineer tries to extract keying information it will make the process significantly more difficult to figure out your keys. If a reverse engineer gets their hands on your IoT device they can hook it up to a lab bench and start probing the system with differential power analysis alongside other methods to extract this information, but if it's stored within a trusted device then this will also make their jobs difficult.

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