Registering the Cryptographic Service Provider Statically

You register a provider statically by adding a line of the following form to the security properties file:

security.provider.n=providerClassName

This line declares a provider, and specifies its preference order n. The preference order is the order in which providers are searched for requested algorithms (when no specific provider is requested). The order is 1-based; 1 is the most preferred, followed by 2, and so on.

The providerClassName is the fully qualified name of the provider class. You get this name from the provider vendor.

To register a provider, add the previous line to the security properties file, replacing providerClassName with the fully qualified name of the provider class and substituting n with the priority that you would like to assign to the provider.

The standard security provider and the IBMJSSE2 provider shipped with the Java™ 2 platform are automatically registered for you; the following lines appear in the java.security security properties file in distributed platforms to register the IBMJCE security provider with preference order 2 and the IBMJSSE2 provider with preference order 1:

security.provider.1=com.ibm.jsse.IBMJSSEProvider2
security.provider.2=com.ibm.crypto.provider.IBMJCE
security.provider.3=com.ibm.crypto.plus.provider.IBMJCEPlus
security.provider.4=com.ibm.security.jgss.IBMJGSSProvider
security.provider.5=com.ibm.security.cert.IBMCertPath

To utilize another JSSE provider, add a line registering the alternate provider, giving it whatever preference order you prefer.

You can have more than one JSSE provider registered at the same time. They might include different implementations for different algorithms for different engine classes, or they might have support for some or all of the same types of algorithms and engine classes. When a particular engine class implementation for a particular algorithm is searched for, if no specific provider is specified for the search, the providers are searched in preference order and the implementation from the first provider that supplies an implementation for the specified algorithm is used.