What it means.
A Hardware Security Module (HSM) is a specialized physical computing device that safeguards and manages digital keys for strong authentication and crypto-processing. Private keys never leave the hardware boundary in plaintext.
01DefinitionNIST FIPS 140-2 / Microsoft Azure Key Vault
Tamper-resistant dedicated hardware designed to generate, store, and manage cryptographic keys securely.
Where it is used.
Houses the production signer pool in Azure Key Vault Managed HSM. Used by the KLS transaction engine to sign GoQuorum blockchain transactions, token transfers, and multi-sig governance proposals without human access to private keys.
secp256k1 ECDSA cryptographic signing within FIPS 140-2 Level 3 hardware partition, protected by Azure RBAC and multi-factor approval policies.
Read it carefully.
An HSM provides key protection; it does not validate the business logic of transactions sent to it for signing.
- TT-SPEC-IAM-SECURITY-001
- TT-SPEC-SMART-CONTRACTS-001