ABSTRACT
Say the word “bank” to the average person, and he or she will likely think of a thick, iron safe, housed in a stately marble building, with security cameras and watchful guards. For a variety of reasons — to deter robbers, to insure employees remain honest, to assure customers and the community that the institution is trustworthy — the brick-and-mortar financial industry evolved a culture that valued strong and visible physical security. These values from the brick-and-mortar, financial world are brought over to the electronic, financial world. Augmenting host computer systems with specialized Hardware Security Modules (HSM) is a common practice in financial cryptography, which probably constitutes the main business driver for their production (although one can trace roots to other application domains such as defense and anti-piracy).
