Editing XKMS (section)

== Architecture ==
XKMS consists of two parts:
;X-KISS: XML Key Information Service Specification
;X-KRSS: XML Key Registration Service Specification

The X-KRSS defines the protocols needed to register public key information.  X-KRSS can generate the key material, making key recovery easier than when created manually.

The X-KISS outlines the syntax that applications should use to delegate some or all of the tasks needed to process the key information element of an XML signature to a trust service.

In both cases the goal of XKMS is to allow all the complexity of traditional PKI implementations to be offloaded from the client to an external service. While this approach was originally suggested by Diffie and Hellman in their New Directions paper this was generally considered impractical at the time leading to commercial development focusing on the certificate based approach proposed by [[Loren Kohnfelder]].