Beginning with se.SAM™ N-Series version 5.0 – planned for summer 2022 – sematicon AG will offer a HSM based PKI solution for IT and industrial use. The Certificate Authority (CA) will be available as an integrated software module on se.SAM™ N200 Crypto Appliance and se.SAM™ NX200 24-48V Industrial DIN_rail fan-less appliance.

Positioning of se.SAM™ PKI

Following the N200 core concepts all CA and sub-CA keys are crypto keys held in hardware. These CA keys are managed in the intuitive N200 admin GUI and synchronized within HSM clusters. CA keys are included in automatic backups and no limitation on numbers of keys, crypto operations, or accessing clients apply.

Typical CA installationsse.SAM™ PKI
DistributionSoftware onlyPlug & play hardened appliance
UpdateManual update process of OS and application requiredOne-step appliance firmware update process with fallback option
KeysSoftware onlyPlug & play hardened appliance
ScopeCA server limited to 1 CA most common 1 Root-CA or 1 Issue-CAN200 appliance supports a nearly unlimited number of Root-CAs and Issue-CAs
AvailabilityDependent on a single physical or virtual serverFull-redundant HSM cluster with up to 64 instances
BackupImplementation dependent Out-of-the-box backup for keys, templates, issued CAs, and certificates
LicenseTypical licenses required for server and number of issued certificatesFlat-fee license, se.SAM™ PKI covers unlimited CAs and certificates for company internal and external use
AlgorithmsOften still focuses on RSA keysWide support of ECC algorithms including SECG, NIST and Brainpool curves, as well as RSA keys
Key DistributionVaries from vendor, typical manual approval process and handling of file-based certificatesManual issuing is supported, but focus on REST API for certificate signing requests with automated issuing
Target MarketITIT, Industry, IoT and Embedded Systems

Enclosed a functional overview of se.SAM™ PKI and its services and results.

se.SAM PKI functional overview

se.SAM PKI functional overview

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