Patent ID: 8751791

Claim:
A method for confirming authenticity of a public key infrastructure (PKI) transaction event between a relying node and a subject node in a communication network, the method comprising: establishing at a PKI event logging (PEL) server a process to achieve secure communications with the relying node; processing at the PEL server reported PKI transaction event data received from the relying node, wherein the reported PKI transaction event data describe the PKI transaction event between the relying node and the subject node; and transmitting the reported PKI transaction event data from the PEL server to the subject node, wherein one or more of: the reported PKI transaction event data are transmitted from the PEL server to the subject node in response to a query message received at the PEL server from the subject node; the reported PKI transaction event data are automatically transmitted from the PEL server to the subject node in response to processing at the PEL server the reported PKI transaction event data; and whereby the subject node can compare the reported PKI transaction event data with corresponding local PKI transaction event data to confirm the authenticity of the PKI transaction event.