System Architecture76 Netscape Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide • October 2001NSSNetwork Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to supportcross-platform development of security-enabled communications applications.Applications built with the NSS libraries support the SSL protocol forauthentication, tamper detection, and encryption as well as the PKCS #11 interfacefor cryptographic token interfaces. Netscape uses NSS to support these features ina wide range of products, including Certificate Management System.For more information about NSS, check this site:http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/As shown in Figure 1-10, NSS communicates with PKCS #11 modules through thePKCS #11 interface and in turn provides the foundation for Java Security Servicesand higher Java layers.JSS and the Java/JNI LayerJava Security Services (JSS) provides a Java interface for security operationsperformed by NSS. JSS and higher levels of the Certificate Management Systemarchitecture are built with the Java Native Interface (JNI), which provides binarycompatibility across different versions of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Thisdesign allows customized subsystem services to be compiled and built just onceand run on a range of platforms.Middleware/Java 2 LayersA middleware layer above JSS and the Java/JNI layer provides a range of servicesrequired by the Registration Manager, Certificate Manager, Data RecoveryManager, and Online Certificate Status Manager. The middleware layer is based onJava 2.0, SDK 1.3.0, and it underlies both the manager subsystems and the APIsavailable to third-party developers for building custom authentication and policymodules. The default authentication and policy modules provided with CertificateManagement System are built from the same Java classes.
