Hardware Security Module
A hardware security module (HSM) is a dedicated crypto processor physical computing device which is specifically designed for the protection and manages of the digital crypto key lifecycle, strong authentication and provides cryptoprocessing. Hardware security modules protect the cryptographic infrastructure and can deploy high assurance security solutions, provide a hardened, tamper-resistant environment for performing secure cryptographic processing, key protection, and key management.
enterprises buy HSM to securing transactions, identities, cryptographic keys and provisioning encryption, decryption, authentication, and digital signing services for a wide range of applications. An HSM is a device used for key management encryption and decryption of data. The HSM holds the key material on the device and there is no way to export the keys in a usable format. This keeps and attacker from copying your encrypted database and then taking the key and decrypting the data offsite, on his own time, where he is less likely to be caught