Effective key management for data encryption and decryption

Abstract

Modifying support security parameters without stalling data transfer rather than stalling the data transfer when support security modification requests are received is an effective key management operation for data encryption and decryption. For example, incorporating multiple security partition slots in the device controller. Each slot holds security parameters and an IO counter that holds the current number of pending commands in the device that are going to use that slot. The security partition slots are used as ping-pong buffers allowing the device to modify a second slot while freezing the values on a first slot until completing the previous queued commands that are still under execution. The slots allow support security parameter on-the-fly modifications without stalling any IO traffic. The slots feature is very important for QoS and system performance.