Application programming interface (API)

Applications are able to access the security functionality using several standard APIs, and one proprietary API.

Standard API:

Proprietary API:

All interfaces are exported from the same library, but will internally be handled as different components. The calling application is able to use any interface as if they are separate libraries.

Make sure to examine possible interference if more than one interfaces are used at the same time. The reason for this interference is that changes take effect immediately. This only has effect on management applications and not on standard applications using the certificate and private keys.

All interfaces are available on all platforms, although CSP, KSP, and MiniDriver are interfaces that initially were provided by Microsoft for Windows platforms. Normally your application will not access CSP, KSP, or MiniDriver direct. It will most likely use CryptoAPI or Cryptography Next Generation (CNG), which will call our component. However, if your application uses the low-level functions in CryptoAPI, the change to CSP is quite simple.