With such certificates, a person will be able to enter the world of electronic commerce with the highest degree of security. Each person's electronic certificate contains his own database, including all of his authorizations and access privileges. It also contains his public number, so that anyone with this certificate can verify his public key digital signatures. Such digital signatures are also counterfeit proof and are expected to be as legally acceptable as today's notarized hand written signatures. Thus, the combination of personal digital signatures and certificates allows a person to conduct secure electronic commerce.
Certificates are the equivalent of passports to travel the information highway.
Suppose a server or host computer is used to control access into a corporate computer communications network. In traditional secret password systems, the remote user and the ACS Server on the network must share a secret number. This means that the ACS Server must maintain a database of all authorized users' secret numbers. For the certificate based access control systems, the ACS Server needs only to be able to authenticate certificates issued by the certification authority. It does not need to store secret numbers, nor any data about users.