VeriSign Secure Electronic Commerce Building the Infrastructure for Secure Electronic Commerce Digital Certificates for Authentication One of the primary reasons cryptography is the key to safeguarding information in the virtual world is its versatility. Beyond the obvious applications of ensuring privacy and confidentiality for electronic messaging, cryptography can also be used for authentication. Authentication is the process of verifying that people or things you cannot see are who or what they claim to be. It is the most essential of all the security services because it is the basis of access control, permissions and authorizations, enforcing accountability, and achieving non-repudiation. And one of the key applications of cryptography for authentication is the digital certificate.
Digital certificates provide a practical way to use encryption.
Overview of Digital Certificates Digital certificates are in effect virtual fingerprints that authenticate the identity of a person or thing absolutely, positively. The certificate itself is simply a collection of information to which a digital signature is attached. The certificate's validity period All this information is digitally signed and sealed by the CA and can be verified by anyone. Every time someone sends an electronic message, they attach their Digital ID to sign and encrypt that message. The recipient of the message first uses his or her own Digital ID to verify that the author's public key is authentic, then uses that public key to verify the message itself.