Patent ID: 8370626

Claim:
A method performed by public key infrastructure (PKI) management system for generating identity data to be provisioned in product devices that are a part of a project, comprising: establishing at a network interface computer a template associated with each certificate authority (CA) in a hierarchical chain of CAs having a root CA at a highest level in the chain and a signing CA at a lowest level in the chain, wherein the template associated with the signing CA inherits mandatory attribute fields specified in the root CA and any intermediate CA in the hierarchical chain, said mandatory attribute fields being user-specifiable fields to be populated with public key infrastructure (PKI) data; generating at the network interface computer a configuration file upon receipt at the network interface computer of an order for digital certificates using PKI data provided by a user computer to populate the mandatory attribute fields of the template associated with the signing CA; and generating the digital certificates requested in the order with order fulfillment processors communicating with the network user interface using the PKI data in the configuration file.