Research On System Architecture Of Symmetric Key Management

There is little paper about the key-management architecture during my development and research in the System of Education Card Key-management. Some papers give one or more methods about how to manage keys in system or how to realize a key-management system, but none give an all-side, standard system architecture in key-management. This article puts forward new system architecture like that after more research in system engineering methods and key-management. The new architecture is a three-dimensional model and based on PKI.The first dimension is time-dimension for all the phases of key lifecycle, the most important technology and management content in each phase is described there. The second one is technology-dimension for all kinds of technologies in key-management, and the similar technologies are compared there. The last one is management-dimension for management, and all problems that cannot be solved by technologies can be solved by management in this dimension. The three-dimension architecture is an integer to keep the security of system, and it will be result in system collapse if one of the dimensions, even one of the factors in one dimension is ignored.A key-management system is developed for "the standard of Chinese Education IC Card" according the new architecture model. In the experimental application of the Chinese Education IC Card System, the new key-management system performs high security and stability. The new architecture can be extending to other key-management in the future.