58 DataPower SOA Appliance Service Planning, Implementation, and Best Practices
3.1 Overview of keys and certificates
Keys and certificates are used for cryptographic functions. Understanding how to
manage the keys and certificates on the DataPower appliance is important
because this can affect the overall security of the network and the integrity of
messages.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a common implementation for securing data
transfer over a network. Typically, SSL connections are required to be terminated
when reaching the DataPower appliance. This means that the appliance must
store its own keys and certificates to allow this.
Public key cryptography uses a certificate (which contains a public key) and a
private key. Public keys and pr ...