Leveling hsm service with network traffic control

Abstract

Provided is a method for a Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliance to provide cryptographic services to multiple clients via cryptographic service requests and responses transmitted over a secure communication channel there between. The method comprises the steps of providing a traffic control feature for communications over said secure communication channel by way of a Linux Kernel, and leveling cryptographic service and balancing a workload of cryptographic transactions on the HSM appliance for the multiple clients submitting said requests and receiving said responses by way of a Traffic Control Agent (TCA), thereby distributing a fair, proportional share of resources on the HSM appliance needed for servicing the cryptographic services to multiple clients irrespective of thread count per client. Other embodiments disclosed, including a dynamic intelligent TCA.