November 1999
Intermediate to advanced
320 pages
8h 46m
English
Having gained an understanding of public-key cryptography in the previous chapter and an understanding of an infrastructure in this chapter, we are now ready to contemplate the notion of a public-key infrastructure (PKI). The seed idea, of course, is very simple:
A PKI is a pervasive security infrastructure whose services are implemented and delivered using public-key concepts and techniques.
Exploring this rudimentary definition further (that is, thinking about it in terms of practical operational consequences) leads to a slightly broader and more realistic definition, whose many parts we discuss briefly here and more fully in the following chapters.
The fundamental premise ...