The public key technology working within Communicator and Netscape servers is often described with unfamiliar security terminology. The following explanation of how public keys work may be an interesting supplement to your knowledge of Internet security. A computer's security key is a file.
Keys are more like magnetic badges with powerful encryption and decryption capabilities.
There are two kinds of keys, private and public, and you need both. A private key sits on your computer and you never give it out. A public key can be copied repeatedly and given out to everybody. You need both kinds of keys because they are fundamentally linked. You can pass your public key around to whomever you wish, but for any key to perform its decryption duty, it needs to be matched back to its linked key partner.