My Setup

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

I store my keys onto the YubiKey for daily use but I keep backups in case my YubiKey gets damaged or lost, as this will result in data loss and the hassle of creating and distributing new keys to all devices and services.

Here I’ll show my key setup.

💡 It is possible to create the keys directly on the YubiKey itself but then it is impossible to create a backup.

My PGP Key is secured with a passphrase and consists of four parts.

  • Main Certificate
    • Sub Signing
    • Sub Encryption
    • Sub Authentication

The Yubikey holds only the Sub-Keys and is protected with a PIN which will lock the Yubikey if entered wrong three times in a row.

A second passphrase secures my backup. I desiced to use two backup solutions simultaneously.

  • Encrypted USB Thumbdrive
  • Encrypted Archive in my private Cloud

PGP Setup Chart