DEVICE WITH PRIVILEGED MEMORY AND APPLICATIONS THEREOF

A device includes a key store memory, a rule set memory, a plurality of cryptographic clients, and a key store arbitration module. The key store memory stores a plurality of cryptographic keys and the rule set memory stores a set of rules for accessing the cryptographic keys. A cryptographic client is operable to issue a request to access a cryptographic key(s) and, when access to the cryptographic key is granted, execute a cryptographic function regarding at least a portion of the cryptographic key to produce a cryptographic result. The key store arbitration module is operable to determine whether the request to access the cryptographic key is valid; when the request is valid, interpret the request to produce an interpreted request; access the rule set memory based on the interpreted request to retrieve a rule of the set of rules; and grant access to the cryptographic key in accordance with the rule.