Architecture of a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP)

This section describes the internal structure of a typical CSP and explains some of the assumptions implicit in the CryptoAPI/CryptoSPI design. Although each CSP is structured differently, the material in this section is general and applies to all cryptographic service providers.

Topics covered in this section are:

• CSP Architectural Overview
• Entry Points
• Persistent Data Objects
• Volatile Data Objects