Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Security Handbook

Digital Certificates

Now you have an overview of public-key crypto systems and how they can help provide somekey features in your overall security architecture. This brings us to a discussion of certificates. Certificates are a way of making public-key cryptography easier to use in a large-scale environment, such as an enterprise network or even the Internet.

What Is a Certificate?

A certificate is a file containing information about an entity that is signed by a certificate authority. The types of information necessary in a digital certificate are an entity's name, the public key, and the cryptographic algorithm for that key. Certificates are important because they bind a public key to the requesting entity.

Certificates are useful because they ...