HSM and TPM - CompTIA A+ 220-1201 - 3.5

A lot of what we do in technology has to do with secrets. We have a lot of information that we want to keep secret from other people, and in some cases, we want to be sure that the information we're storing on our own system is only available to us and no one else. To

provide this security, we need to use encryption, and we use encryption on almost everything. Your mobile phone is using encryption not only to store information, but to transmit information over the airwaves. When we send information back and forth to a web server, that entire network communication is encrypted, and when we're storing information on our local

hard drive or SSD, all of that data can also be encrypted. Very often, the process that we use for encrypting and decrypting data is a very well-known process. These are usually based on standards that are open and public, and you can reference and read through those standards to understand exactly what's happening when

information is encrypted and decrypted. This is very common to the doorknobs that we use connected to our house, but just knowing how a lock in a doorknob works doesn't somehow allow you access through that door. To be able to gain access, you need the one thing that is unique that no one else has, and that's

your key. Although we don't have a physical door key on our computer, we have digital keys that we use during this encryption and decryption process. And if we are encrypting data with a key, we need to be sure that we have the correct key to be able to decrypt that information later. But now we have a problem where we have

data that we've encrypted, we need to protect the key that we've encrypted it with, but how do you protect the key that you're using for all of these cryptographic functions? On your personal computer, one of the ways that we can help protect this key is by using a trusted platform module or a TPM. This TPM is a standardized piece