Most of today’s corporate IT environments use Microsoft Operating Systems and their Active Directory. Microsoft provides different features to secure the infrastructure by various roles and services. The main task of all these applications is to store private keys. By default, these are located on the hard drive of the system and are thus not protected from attacks. Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are used to provide a secure storage environment for the keys by employing physical and logical security measures.
This integration guide provides an explanation of the methods in which an HSM can be integrated with various features of Microsoft Server Operating Systems.