Trusted Computing, as specified by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG, http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/), comprises multiple layers of hard- and software. While the hardware primarily consists of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), there are multiple support software components required.

There are potential security benefits in connecting many trusted computing enabled platforms, however, there is a need to standardize security credentials to enable easy automated processing and the building of a trusted computing aware public key infrastructure (PKI).

IAIK XKMS is a implementation of the XML Key Management Specification protocol (XKMS, http://www.w3.org/TR/xkms2/). XKMS is one of the candidates for a PKI protocol serving a Trusted Computing infrastructure, as suggested by the TCG in their Reference Architecture for Interoperability (IWG https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/specs/IWG):

 "XKMS provides a way to express certificate management function is XML,
  while providing a wrapper over legacy CA services designed for X.509
  certificates. As such, XKMS provides the most attractive solution for
  credential management for existing CAs in the PKI industry. XKMS has
  completed standardization in the W3C."

IAIK XKMS is developed and maintained at the Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communication (Institut für Angewandte Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation, http://www.iaik.tugraz.at/), at Graz University of Technology http://www.tugraz.at/.

Development of IAIK XKMS is supported by the European Commission as part of the OpenTC project (Ref. Nr. 027635).