Chapter 17. Active Directory Certificate Services

In this chapter:
Active Directory Certificate Services Overview	661
Implementing AD CS	670
Managing Certificates in AD CS	685
Designing an AD CS Implementation	694
Summary	700
Best Practices	701
Additional Resources	701

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is the Microsoft implementation of public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI deals with the components and processes for issuing and managing digital certificates that are used for encryption and authentication. It is not mandatory to implement AD CS as part of a Windows Server 2008 Active Directory structure. However, many organizations find it useful to deploy this service internally rather than relying on an external provider.