Digital Certificates :: Essays Papers

Digital Certificates General Introduction The creation of Digital Ids has become lately a big need since a variety of electronic transaction including e-mail, electronic commerce, groupware and electronic funds transfer have made a part of everyone's life especially those that accessing the net makes the basis of their daily work where nothing can introduce them or identify them but a digital certificate that is authenticated for the server. Thus, in order to prove your identity in electronic transactions, just as a driver license or a passport does in face-to-face interaction, came the need to create Digital Ids that are instrumental in establishing a secure channel for communicating any sensitive information back to the server. In this way, every document or data or information sent to friends, associations, firms... are authentic. In more words, Digital Ids are presented to show your right to access information or online services. Digital Ids are also known as certificates. They are issued by certification authority (ca) such as Verisign, that provides besides issuing, revocation and renewing of the certificates. Therefor Digital Ids provide a more complete security solution. A Digital Id typically contains the: 1- Owner's public key. 2- Owner's name. 3- Expiration date of the public key. 4- Name of the issuer (the certification authority that issued the Id ex: Verisign). 5- The serial number of the Digital Id. 6- Digital signature of the issuer. Types of Certificates. 1- Personal Certificates: used to identify yourself to the server and to all users. 2- Server Certificates: designed to protect you and your visitors to your site, it's used by secure servers who ensure the user that his affiliation is legitime. 3- Advantages: a- Authenticate your site: A Digital certificate on your server automatically communicates your site's authenticity to visitor's web browsers, confirming that the visitor is actually communicating with you, and not with a fraudulent site stealing credit card numbers or any personal information. b- keep private communication private: Digital Certificates encrypt the data visitors that exchange with your site to keep it safe from interception or tampering using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology, the industry-standard method for protecting web communications. Virtually all web servers and leading browsers, including Netscape Communicator, are optimized and ready for SSL. To activate SSL sessions with visitors to your site, all you need is a Digital Certificate for your sever. c- Identity visitors: If visitors to your site use personal Digital Certificates, your server can instantly recognize them, facilitating instant log-in ( and preventing later repudiation of the web transaction ).