Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Public Key Infrastructure (Digital Cert )

Public-key infrastructure (PKI) is a combination of hardware, software, policies, processes, and encryption technologies that are required to secure the communication and transactions of an organization. PKI relies on the exchange of digital certificates between the authenticated users and the trusted source.

Digital certificate is an electronic credential consist of public keys that has the information on the subject, validity and applications that use this certificate. It provide a way to secure data, as well as manage identification credentials of users and computers.

Applications that use PKI:

  • Digital signatures
  • Smart card logon
  • Secure e-mail
  • Software code signing
  • IP Security (IPSec)
  • Software restriction policy
  • Internet authentication
  • Encrypting File System
PKI consist of a few components which are closely related together:
  • Certificate and CA management tools 
  • Certification Authority (CA)
  • Registration Authority (RA)
  • Validation Authority (VA)
  • Attribute Authority (AA)
  • Attribute Certificates
  • Certificate Template
  • Digital Certificate
  • PKI enabled applications and services

Reference:
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2 comments:

  1. Andrea14 July 2012 at 02:36

    Very nice post. I must say that you have provided an absolute detail about public key infrastructure. This article has proved to be of great help to me to learn about this useful technique. Thanks friend for posting this detail.
    public key infrastructure

    ReplyDelete
  2. Winnie Tan14 July 2012 at 10:42

    No problem. Its part of my learning too. =)

    ReplyDelete

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