Patent ID: 7366906

Claim:
A digital certificate management system comprising: a client and server system in which a digital certificate is used for authentication so as to establish communication between a server and a client, and data transmission is performed therebetween with the use of the communication established through the authentication; and a digital certificate management apparatus communicatable with the client and the server, and wherein: said digital certificate management apparatus comprises a proof key updating unit which updates a proof key used for proving validity of the digital certificate used for authentication by the server; said proof key updating unit comprises: a unit configured to acquire a new proof key for updating; a unit configured to acquire a new digital certificate used for the authentication for which validity can be proved with the use of said new proof key; a first transmitting unit transmitting the new proof key to the client; and a second transmitting unit transmitting a new server certificate which is the new digital certificate for the server, to the server, and wherein: said second transmitting unit performs operation of transmitting the new server certificate to the server after receiving, from the client, information indicating that the client has received the new proof key.