Public key infrastructure

Uncommon card · No. 102675

A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures used to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key cryptography set-ups. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure storage and/or transfer of information for activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email, where passwords are an inadequate method of authentication, and more rigorous proofs are required to confirm the identities of the parties involved, and to validate the information. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective identities of entities (like people and organizations). The binding is established through a process of registration and issuance of certificates at and by a certificate authority (CA). Depending on the assurance level of the binding, this may be carried out by an automated process or under human supervision. When done over a network, this requires using...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Chris 論, CC BY-SA 3.0