Backing Up Your Certificates
When you use encryption for the first time (and you don't already have a certificate that's valid for EFS), Windows creates a self-signed certificate for EFS. (Self-signed means that the certificate has not been granted by a trusted certification authority that can confirm your identity. Such verification is unnecessary for this purpose; in this case, the signature merely confirms that the certificate was created while your account was logged on.) This certificate becomes your personal encryption certificate, and it contains the public/private key pair used for encrypting and decrypting files while you're logged on.
Each user who encrypts files on a system has a personal encryption certificate. In addition, Windows ...
Get Microsoft® Windows® XP Networking and Security Inside Out: Also Covers Windows 2000 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
