Applications

In the PKWARE Enterprise Manager, an Application is mapped to one or more Smartkey Kinds. These Kinds are used by the Manager to filter which keys the client of that Application should receive when it asks the Manager for keys. For example, the Smartcrypt Desktop and Mobile applications are mapped to Kinds including smartcrypt and community. This mapping mechanism is used by the Manager to segregate Applications from one another. It is important to note that permission to use the key is tied to an Identity - the mapping only serves to determine if that Identity can use the Smartkey with a specific Application.

Strategies for Application Kinds

Determining your strategy for structuring your Smartkeys is important for security and ease of management. Below are some typical scenarios and strategies for structuring keys in each scenario. Work closely with your development team on selecting your strategy and configuring your Kinds.

General use

In most cases, an application only needs one Kind associated with it. For example, you might indicate that the Application for your customer management system (CMS) should receive acme_cms keys, but that your in-house chat app should receive acme_chat keys.

In some cases though, you may want to enforce additional rules.

Kinds for security groups

You may have a set of Smartkeys that are used for extremely sensitive data, regardless of the application, with a Kind of acme_sensitive. In this case, your CMS and chat applications should both be allowed to use these key Kinds, in additional to their application-specific Kinds. Accordingly, you would configure the CMS application to have Kinds acme_cms and acme_sensitive, and the chat app to have acme_chat and acme_sensitive.

Kinds for key purpose

You may have a set of Smartkeys that are used for a specific type of data. For example, you may define the Kind acme_database for all keys that are used to encrypt database columns. In this case, you would want both your CMS and your chat applications to have access to these Kinds so they can use the corresponding Smartkeys to encrypt data before storing them. Accordingly, you would configure the CMS application to have Kinds acme_cms and acme_database, and the chat app to have acme_chat and acme_database.