Chapter 18. Fundamentals of the Public Key Infrastructure

The public key infrastructure (PKI) is a combination of policies, procedures, hardware, software, and people that are required to create, manage, and revoke (when necessary) digital certificates. Similar to the concept of how a driver of a car can receive a license to drive, and that license because it is issued from a trusted agency can be used by others to validate the identity of the person who has the license, an identity digital certificate, issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA), can provide similar functionality in the digital world of networking.

On a bigger scale, digital certificates can be used for authenticating a specific user, system, or server, and going beyond that, the certificate can also be used as part of the protocols to establish an encrypted private session.