This article is valid for Smart ID Identity Manager 24.R1 or later.
IDM 24.R1 makes a number of significant changes compared to earlier releases!
Please review this document and its related pages carefully before proceeding with a fresh installation or upgrade.
Important: Most descriptors need to have their certificates and keys bootstrapped before starting the application(s) for the first time.
The sign and encrypt engine is the central component of Identity Manager for signing, verification and encryption using keys and certificates. It handles several use cases, and most of them have to be configured for each deployment, so that the private keys are kept secret. The keys themselves can be stored in files or in certain cases on a Hardware Security Module (HSM) for increased security.
The use cases the engine handles include encryption and decryption of fields in the Identity Manager database, signing, verification and encryption of the object history and many more.
The sign and encrypt engine provides a consistent configuration of keys and certificates for both signing and encryption. You can define algorithms and parameters and reference keys from an HSM (for most use-cases) or from PKCS#12 files (for all use cases).