The HSM has areas of memory allocated to store data for use during processing. This facility allows commonly-used data to be held within the HSM, and not transmitted with each command that requires it. This reduces communications time and thus increases throughput.
User data is stored in 8-byte blocks, each block containing 16 hexadecimal digits. The size of key to store in the user storage area is configured using the CS (Configure Security) console command. The user storage is indexed with reference to the key size. If keys of shorter lengths or decimalisation tables are to be loaded they should be padded with F to the key length configured, i.e. filling the index location.
The memory available for user storage is 98304 bytes, addressable in the range 0-4096 (0-H’FFF).
User storage must be reloaded on power up or when coming on-line from an off-line state. User storage is erased when:
· It (the storage) is used for processing PIN solicitation data.
· The HSM diagnostics function is issued from the Console.
· Power is turned off.
· The HSM is reset.
The application should reload user storage if the HSM reports that the user storage has been erased, or there is a key parity error.