Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Administrator's Companion

Understanding the Public Key Infrastructure in Windows Server 2003

A PKI deployment involves several basic components. A solid understanding of how these components work is essential to setting up good, basic network security. You can think of the PKI as a collection of resources that work together to provide a secure messaging authentication system. The major components of a PKI are as follows:

• Certificate Services

• Digital certificates

• Policies to manage the certificates

• Microsoft CryptoAPI and cryptographic service providers (CSPs)

• Certificate stores for storing certificates

Encryption and Keys

Basic security starts with encryption, which is the process of scrambling data before sending it over a medium. A key is input into a mathematical function, ...