Public Infrastructure Key Essay Example for Free

Public Infrastructure Key Essay The PKI is a set of hardware, software, procedures and people for the creation, distribution, storing and management of digital certificates. It also maintains the networking environment of an organization by providing management service which could enable digital signature capabilities. It also enabled the users of unsecure public network for exchanging and private cryptographic key pair in order to obtain and share a trusted authority between the management of an organization. For improving an organization, PKI includes use of digital signatures, certificate validation, and permission management service in order to implement a wide variety of enterprise solution within an organization. The implementation of certification authority is primary way of PKI in which it could benefit an organization and Information security department by providing public key and authority. In this way, both organization and Information security department is benefited from the implementation of user keys. The web of trust is the second way in which PKI provides an alternative approach of public key information for enabling the issue digital certificates for user, applications and devices of an organization and Information security department. Establishment of leverage certification authentication is the third way which benefits an organization and Information security department by maintaining an auditable database of users in order to secure privacy histories of Information security department. The development of Certification Authority is the way in which PKI could assist in the process of signing the company’s software by providing root of trust and services for the authentication of computers, individuals and other entities in a network. This is because, it saves certificate requests and issues certificates for signing the company’s software by means of saving the encryption keys in the certificate database for recovering the data loss of  computer’s softwar e. Consumer could believe that the software is to be authentic and because Certification Authority is valuable in authenticating software effectively. Consumer can get authentic software by the establishment of keys which are valid and trustworthy and in order to provide the assurance of software, it represents the people, system and process for the creation of digital certificates of software. For benefiting consumers, Certification Authority is having three kinds of information which are user’s name in the format of distinguished name, verification of user’s digital signature for software and encryption and verification of digital signatures of software. The public CA is considered as an accountable CA for any failure of PKI and on the other hand, in-house CA is integrated in Active Directory. The public CA would trust a digital certificate and in-house CA is performed upon its own tasks for simplifying the management of CA structure. The certificate management of public CA is lower than in-house CA. These are the positive characteristics of both public and in-house CA. The negative characteristics of public and in-house CA are that infrastructure of public CA is limited and it has less flexibility, in-public CA is more complicated and business partners would not trust in-house CA. When comparing both public and in-house CA, the Public Certification will be better in implementing within an organization and because Public CA provides effective self-registration, digital identities, enrollment services and PIN authentication than in-house CA. Public CA is a highly functional and trustworthy when comparing with in-house CA. Hence, PKI contributes the management of life cycle of digital certificates, profiles of administration for an organization and Information security department. References Vacca, Jhn R. (2004). Public key infrastructure: building trusted applications and Web services. CRC Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-8493-0822-2. Adams, Carlisle Lloyd, Steve (2003). Understanding PKI: concepts, standards, and deployment considerations. Addison-Wesley Professional. pp. 11–15. ISBN 978-0-672-32391-1. TrÄ ek, Denis (2006). Managing information systems security and privacy. Birkhauser. p. 69. ISBN 978-3-540-28103-0.