Interfacing to Tape Management Systems › How Key Information is Retained

How Key Information is Retained

Key information is retained in different ways depending on the type of key and the tape management system at your site. The following points outline this process:

• CA Tape Encryption is designed to map a single CA Tape Encryption database to a single tape management system catalog. Because keys are identified by a key index it is possible to lose key index information by interfacing CA Tape Encryption to the wrong tape catalog.

  Note: For information on key management, see Tape Management Systems and Key Management.

• All B2B tapes are assigned a single key index because the data encryption keys that are created are single-use keys. They are temporarily retained in the CA Tape Encryption database for the number of hours specified in the B2BRsaKeepHours attribute.
• For sites running CA 1, CA TLMS, and DFSMSrmm the key index is passed to the tape management system during tape file close processing.
• For sites that are not running CA 1, CA TLMS, or DFSMSrmm , the CA Tape Encryption TEP module calls a Third Party Option interface routine provided by CA Tape Encryption to obtain the key index after file open processing and before the completion of file close processing.
• The tape management systems save the key index in their respective tape catalogs.