This chapter provides an overview of the Keychain Manager. You can use this technology to develop an application that will create, store, and manage passwords and other secure data. The Keychain Manager provides a method for secure storage that can be utilized by both OS and application developers.
The need for secure storage has become more and more urgent with the increase in business transactions via email and the Web. These transactions require the user to remember and enter multiple passwords. In response, users often make up very simple passwords that anyone could decipher, or leave passwords in the backs of notebooks or desk drawers where they can be easily found. In either case, security is an issue. To remedy this problem, the Keychain Manager allows users to invent long or complicated passwords, enter them once into secure storage and then forget them.
The following sections provide a conceptual overview of Keychain Manager: