Certificate Policies & Certificate Practice Statements – Destroying Vs. Archiving CA’s Private Keys (HSMs)
Please Consider: English is my second language.
Background
I have been looking at different CP/CPS on the web. They all seem to roughly follow the same practices. However, two different policies differed: the first makes sense to me; the second… well, not so much.
Although I can have a vague idea on the rationale behind the second policy, I would like to really understand the different implications of each in order to make an informed decision as to how I would implement this.
Contrast
The first policy (the one that makes sense to me) is from Cisco. On page 22, section 6.2.9 Method of Destroying Private Key:
Upon expiration or revocation of a certificate, or other termination of use of a private key for creating signatures, all copies of the private key shall be securely destroyed.
The second policy, requires the private key not to be destroyed, but archived. It is from StartCom Ltd, on page 34’s second paragraph:
[…] CA private keys shall be archived after expiration of the public key according to the same procedure as the CA root key.
Question
My question is then: what would be rationale behind each, and what would be the possible implications of choosing one over the other?
