| Personal Security Environment (BC-SEC) |
Secure location where a user or component's public-key information is stored.
The Personal Security Environment (PSE) for a user or component is typically located in a protected directory in the file system or on a smart card. It contains both the public information (public-key certificate and private address book) as well as the private information (private key) for its owner. Therefore, only the owner of the information should be able to access his or her PSE.