Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Security Handbook

General Overview of Certificate Usage

The fantastic growth of Internet-connected systems in the world in general and in large enterprise networks specifically brings a growing need for greater security. Using certificates in your network architecture can simplify many aspects of authentication, privacy, and authorization. To begin, I give you a simplified example of a small corporate network, and then I show how certificates can greatly reduce the overhead of managing users, both internally and externally.

A wide array of applications on the Internet today use digital certificates. A few examples are

• SSL communications

• S/MIME email security

• IPSec

• PKI systems for key distribution

• Single sign-on authentication services

• Signing code, such as signed Java ...