Planning Your Requirements

Before implementing the Sentinel Licensing API, the following preliminary issues should be considered.

>What do you want to protect?

This may seem obvious, but it is crucial when you decide where to place the calls to the Sentinel protection key. Typically, you would want to verify the presence of the Sentinel protection key at startup. However, you can also identify certain aspects of the software to protect, and apply your Sentinel Licensing API calls accordingly.

>Will encrypted data be included in your implementation scheme?

If you plan to use encrypted data at run-time, use Sentinel LDK ToolBox to encrypt the data. Insert the encrypted data when implementing the Sentinel Licensing API. The data is decrypted at run-time by the Sentinel protection key.

>Is data going to be stored in the Protection Key?

If the software is protected by a Sentinel protection key with memory functionality, sensitive data can be stored in the Sentinel protection key. The Sentinel Licensing API enables access to read from or write to Protection Key memory. Use Sentinel LDK ToolBox to write data buffers to Protection Key memory.