SSL Certificate Authority – CA
A Certificate Authority (CA) issues digital certificates that contain a public key and the identity of the owner.
Common question for internet security, while every internet user has concern, question who the hell is managing internet security? Who take measure’s for security parameters and who is authorized to do that?
I know it is bit complicated to understand the whole security structure, but here I would like to explain that how internet web-security is being managed and who managing them.
About Internet security is very common question – is my data secure ?, how secure my financial associated transaction over the internet. Who provides security? What type of security measure is being used by internet organization to protect internet data.
Getting this Article on CA (certificate authority) is to share my knowledge with folks who are new bee in IT system. Also spread my knowledge to create awareness of internet users to make them aware how internet security works. Over the time, internet security for E-commerce related functioning over the internet is big buzz and everyone have concern for this. So, this specific topic is related to digital certificates and certificate authority.
✍🏼 in the context of a securing a website, when we use the term digital certificate we often refer to SSL certificates. The CA is the authority responsible for issuing SSL certificates publicly trusted by web browsers.
Certificate Authority-
A Certificate Authority (CA) is a trusted body who are entitled to provide Digital signed SSL certificates (contain a public key and the identity of the owner) to the customer. In short, obtaining a SSL certificate for your business to protect your website, you can directly approach to CA (certificate authority) with few basic details (CSR – Certificate Signing Request) and then they will release a new SSL certificate for your website.
One most common use of SSL certificates authorities is to sign certificates used in HTTPS, Secure internet browsing protocol for the World Wide Web. Another common use for is issuing identity cards by governments , Banking for use in electronically signing documents.
Top 10 Certificate Providers (CA)
- Comodo
- IdenTrust
- GeoTrus
- Network Solutions
- RapidSSL
- Symantec
- Thawte
- DigiCert
- GoDaddy
- GlobalSign
- Trustwave
An SSL Certificate Authority (CA) is an entity that is entitled to sign, issue, distribute and revoke digital certificates.
In order to release new certificates to the customer, CA validate the credentials such as websites, email addresses, companies, location of requester in order to bind cryptographic keys through the issuance of electronic documents known as digital certificates. Thus, CA generate the digital certificates for company. If the information is verified as correct, the certificate authority can then issue a unique certificate for an efficient identity authentication.
A CA (certificate authority) entity is an integral part of public key infrastructure (PKI).CA use Qualified Information Source (QIS) measuring system in order to validating the data provided by customer and establishing a root chain trust, before issuing the digital certificate.
Certificate authority is a critical part of PKI and provide root of trust between client and server that allow us to use website safely.
PKI (public key infrastructure)-
A public key infrastructure (PKI) define set of rules’ and procedures in order to create, manage and distribute and revoke digital certificates and manage public key encryption method. The agenda of PKI is to manage and provide the secure transfer of digital information over the network communications
activities such as internet banking, email and E-commerce. In order to ensure the online activities security to make them more rigorous proof, confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred.
PKI (public key infrastructure) cryptography are entitled to bind public key with each respective customer with unique identity such as domain-name, organizations. The certificates process of binding with PKI is established by following the registration and issuance of certificates at and by a certificate authority (CA).
The PKI role that assures valid and correct registration is called a registration authority (RA). An RA is responsible for accepting requests for digital certificates and authenticating the entity making the request. In a Microsoft PKI, a registration authority is usually called a subordinate CA.
SSL Certificate is typically used when a web browser needs to securely connect to a web server over the insecure Internet.
PKI Encompasses the following Entities
Certificate Authority (CA)
Issue and verifies digital certificates.
Registration Authority (RA)
A registration authority (RA) verifies user requests for a digital certificate and command to certificate authority (CA) to issue the certificates.
Validation Authority (VA)
is an entity that provides a service used to verify the validity of a digital certificate per the mechanisms described in the X.509 standard and RFC 5280
