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Appropriate and successful key management is critical to the secure use of every crypto system without exception. It is, in actual practice, the most difficult aspect of cryptography generally, for it involves system policy, user training, organizational and departmantal interactions in many cases, coordination betwixt end users, etc.

Many of these concerns are not limited to cryptographic engineering and so are outside a strictly cryptographic brief, though of critical importance. As a result, some aspects of key management fall between two stools as the cryptographers may assume this or that aspect is the responsibility of the using department or upper management or some such, while said department or upper management regard it all as being outside their concerns because 'technical', and so within the purview of the cryptographers.

See also:

• NSA's Electronic Key Management System ( EKMS)
• List of cryptographic key types