RSA Security 5.2.2 manual Using Cryptographic Hardware

Using Cryptographic Hardware

To implement this, the hardware accelerator might require you to call its key- wrapping routines to build a digital envelope. When you request the key in order to store it for later use, the hardware could return a handle to the key. But if you give that data to another cryptographic package, the key will mean nothing.

So, once you build a key (symmetric or private) on a hardware device, it is possible that only that hardware device will be able to use that key. Therefore, you should use hardware accelerators only if you thoroughly understand their use.

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