About Cryptography Type

Secure Attributes Exchange provides symmetric and asymmetric cryptography types to secure identity attributes between an instance of OpenSSO Enterprise and an application.

• Symmetric cryptography

  Involves the use of a shared secret key known only to the participants in the communication. The key is agreed upon beforehand and is used to encrypt and decrypt the message.

• Asymmetric cryptography

  Uses two separate keys for encryption and the corresponding decryption - one public key and one private key. The information is encrypted with a public key known to all, and then decrypted by the recipient only, using a private key to which no one else has access.

  This process is known as a public key infrastructure (PKI). On the Identity Provider side, the public key must be added to the OpenSSO Enterprise keystore. The private key must be stored in a protected keystore such as a Hardware Security Module (HSM) for access by the Identity Provider application. On the Service Provider side, the private key must be added to the OpenSSO Enterprise keystore, and the public key stored in a keystore that is local to the Service Provider application.