The invention provides for systems and devices for hardened remote storage of private cryptography keys used for authentication. The storage device is tamper-responsive, such that receipt of a signal that indicates physical or non-physical tampering with the storage device or its components results in deletion of the private cryptography key(s) from the memory. The storage device is configured to be separate and remote from a computing node that executes an authentication routine requiring the private cryptography key(s) and, as such, the private cryptography key(s) are accessible to, but not communicated to, the computing node only when the computing node is executing the authentication routine.