Motivations

The development of applications that make use of modern cryptography is challenging. This task becomes almost impossible when cross-platform support is needed. Instead of requiring the specific Cryptographic Service Provider to be available for all the environment where the application is to be deployed, the provisioning of standard interfaces to cryptographic API can guarantee the application's portability and independence from the specific CSP.

WG Scope

The SICA-WG is focused on defining standard specifications for an application programming interface (API), called "CryptoAPI" to Cryptographic Service Providers (CSPs). This CryptoAPI, short for Cryptographic Application Programming Interface, addresses the goals of technology independence (any kind of underlying crypto provider), presenting to applications a common interface for cryptographic operations.

Specs

The specifications provide definitions for the data types and functions available to an application requiring cryptographic services using the ANSI C programming language. These data types and functions will typically be provided via C header files by the supplier of a CryptoAPI library. Additional documents may provide bindings between CryptoAPI and other programming languages.