a public key infrastucture

Introduction to Public Key Infrastructure

Public key infrastructure is described as a collection of rules, procedures, and policies required to maintain, build, distribute, use, hold, or even store digital certificates, as well as manage public-key encryption. A public key infrastructure’s primary role is typically to enable the safe and reliable electronic transmission of information for various network operations such as internet banking, classified email, and even e-commerce. It is normally used for activities where basic passwords are insufficient for authentication. Often used where more stringent evidence is required to distinguish a person and verify the details being transmitted. The fundamentals or basic elements of public key infrastructure consist of hardware, software, policies and the general standards that manage the creation, administration, distribution, and revocation of the keys and the requisite digital certificates. The first key element is normally a trusted party that is referred to as a certificate authority(CA). It acts as the first component that provides services that verify the various individuals, computers and other components that are involved. It ensures that no stranger access the services or computers in general hence the security is properly assured for. Then there is also the Registration authority also known as the subordinate CA. This one gives certificates that are used for specific purposes as is permitted by the Certificate Authority that is the main root.

Components of Public Key Infrastructure

The other part the certificate database that stores all the certificate requests and it also issues and revokes the requisite certificates that have been requested over time. It is the one responsible for giving permission to certificates that have been requested over time. It is also the one that revokes the certificates that it doesn’t really consider worth to be authenticated. The last part of the fundamental component of a public key infrastructure is the certificate store. It is usually on the local computers. It is responsible for storing of the certificates and the private keys that are needed for the public key infrastructure.

Differences Between Public and In-House Certificate Authority

There is normally a difference between public and in-house certificate authority in other terms called external and internal Certificate Authority. The in-house certificates are simplified and are easily manageable compared to public ones that are normally complicated in terms of management in general. External parties normally trust digital certificates that are signed by a trusted external Certificate Authority such as Verisign that exists in public Certificate Authority, a provision that is not available in-house Certificate Authority. The in-house Certificate Authority is normally cheaper to configure compared to the public certificate authority that normally requires you to pay per certificate. Therefore, I would consider that our organization uses a public certificate authority as it is more trusted by the external parties and that it is more responsible for the security and accountability of the public key infrastructure.

Securing Company Software with Public Key Infrastructure

One way that the public key infrastructure can help in securing signing in of the company’s software is by using keys, a pair in that case that encrypts and decrypt content in general. The key pair should consist of one that is public and the other that is private that should be mathematically related. So it requires that an individual who wants to communicate with others can distribute the public key but must be able to keep the private one safely. It, therefore, follows that content that is encrypted by one key can be decrypted by another one. It is therefore very secure so customers can utmost believe in its security as everything will be very secure in their company’s software.

Benefits of Public Key Infrastructure

There are various reasons and benefits why our organization needs this public key infrastructure. It basically enables the creation of a trusted environment for businesses that conduct trade over the internet. It minimizes fraud by authenticating the identity of people via the internet, a component that we need in our company. It also ensures that the integrity of electronic communications is safe by minimizing the possibility of them being altered while they are in transit. Therefore this is a good way to ensure that our organization is very safe in general.

References

A. Cerpa, J. Elson, D. Estrin, L. Girod, M. Hamilton, and J. Zhao, “Habitat monitoring: Application Driver for Wireless Communications Technology,” 2001.

V. A. Kottapalli, A. S. Kiremidjian, J. P. Lynch, E. Carryer, T. W. Kenny, K. H. Law, and Y. Lei, “Two-tiered wireless sensor network architecture for structural health monitoring,” SPIE’s 10th Annual International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, March 2003.

C. Karlof, N. Sastry, and D. Wagner, “TinySec: A Link Layer Security Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks.” Baltimore, Maryland: Second ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, November 2004.