A digital certificate is a digital file used to encrypt an entity’s public key to certain identification characteristics. The entity may be an individual, an organization, a web entity or an app. A Digital Certificate links the public key with its owner’s data, like a conducting permit or a passport links a photo with private data concerning its owner.
In other words, the Digital Certificate of Alice attests that she and only her Public Key is part of her. In addition to the Public Key, a digital certificate also includes private or corporate data used in order to recognize the holder of the certificate.
Digital Certificate and Certification Authorities The Certification Authorities (CA) issue digital certificates. Like the use of a central trusted body to issue conduct permits or passports, a trusted third-party CA fulfills its function by acceptance of certification apps from companies, authentication of apps, issuance of certificates and retaining status data on issued certificates.
The inclusion of a CA in PKI guarantees that individuals do not mask their own Digital Certificates for unlawful use on the Internet as individuals they do not.
Before proving their identity, the Trusted Third Party CAs check the identity of the applicant by digitally signing a certificate. Because the digital certificate is now a data file, the validity of the digital signature can be verified. Thus, we can confirm the validity of a digital certificate by verifying its validity by checking the digital signature of the signed document.
Since CAs are trusted, many media publish their own Public Keys used to check the signature of issued digital certificates.
The CA offers a Statement of Certification Practice (SCP) which obviously identifies the policies and procedures of the CA concerning Certificate issuance and maintenance. The CPS provides operational and legal information on all entities in the certificate lifecycle roles and responsibilities (from the date it is issued to the day it expires).
A digital certificate is released by the International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T) in accordance with technical suggestions of the format of x.509.