PROTECTING A CONTROL VECTOR IN AN OPTIONAL BLOCK OF A STANDARD KEY BLOCK

A computer program product is provided and includes a tangible storage medium readable by a processing circuit and on which instructions are stored for execution by the processing circuit for validating parameters passed to a parameter database, computing a length required for control vector CV data, preparing an optional block in accordance with a result of the computation, converting the CV to a format for a standardized key block while copying the converted CV into the optional block and updating optional block data in the standardized key block.