These credentials, which come packaged in Web browsers, public key infrastructure software, and VPN and router products, are already quietly emerging in data-sensitive sectors like the financial industry and government.
Digital certificates are software-based IDs that contain a user's credentials.
So far, digital certificates are used mainly for consumer e-commerce transactions, and in early PKI implementations and pilots, mostly in Europe and Canada. But this form of ID will take off in the next year or two. Giga Information Group estimates that some 247 million certificates will be issued overall worldwide between 2000 and 2002, up from around the 25 million out there today. Microsoft's upcoming Windows 2000 release has a lot to do with the digital certificate surge Giga projects for the year 2001. Every app is someday going to have PKIs and digital certificates built in.