---
title: Storing an Identity in the Keychain
framework: security
role: article
role_heading: Article
path: security/storing-an-identity-in-the-keychain
---

# Storing an Identity in the Keychain

Securely store an identity in the keychain.

## Overview

Overview You store an identity in or retrieve an identity from a keychain much as you would a certificate, as described in Storing a Certificate in the Keychain. Private keys have a one-to-many relationship with certificates. That is, a single private key can be paired with multiple certificates, but a given certificate corresponds to exactly one private key. As a result, the fields that distinguish one identity from another are the same as those of the certificate it contains. As a result, working with identities as keychain items is very much like working with certificates, with a few minor adjustments: Use SecIdentity objects instead of SecCertificate objects. Use kSecClassIdentity instead of kSecClassCertificate for the kSecClass attribute.