Using CA Tape Encryption in Your z/OS Environment › How B2B Tape Encryption Works Using Digital Certificates › Advantage of B2B Tape Encryption

Advantage of B2B Tape Encryption

An advantage of using the two types of encryption keys for B2B tapes is that only the symmetric key is encrypted using the public key. This minimizes the processor-intensive overhead associated with the use of public keys. The size of the data that makes up the encrypted symmetric key is smaller than the actual amount of data on the tape. In addition, because the symmetric key can only be decrypted by the private key of the business partner, the symmetric key and the data on the tape are protected.

Note: For more information about encrypting tapes for business partners, see the chapter “Defining Keys in Parmlib.”