Public Key Infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure
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Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) refers to the procedures, policies and mechanisms that collectively provide a framework for addressing security fundamentals that include; confidentiality, integrity, access control, non-repudiation and authentication. The PKI infrastructure is used to validate the requestor’s identity and provide the assurance required in order to trust the security services provided by the certificates (Barker, E., 2009).   It is based on objects that are called certificates and serve as digital identification documents. They associate users to their public keys. A PKI consists of the following features:
Security policy that defines the level of security, the process of cryptography; including information on how to handle keys and value information. Certification Authority (CA) that acts as the PKI’s trust basis, this is where the certificates are created.   Registration authority (RA) that acts as an interface between the users and the CA, i.e., registers and authenticates the user’s identity and forwards certificate requests to the CA. A certificate distribution system can be distribution by the users themselves or by a directory server such as LDAP. The distribution system chosen depends on the PKI’s environment. The last feature is the PKI applications, these allow for communication between the web server and the web browser, e.g., emails. CA and RA can also be combined to create a Trust Center, which can be used for the authentication of individual persons and their messages
Using the PKI security to digitally sign the company software will require a comprehensive coordination among business, technology, and the administrative areas of the organization in order to develop the political, policy and procedural supportive climate. . First, the organization should seek legal counsel that will be involved in the project to ensure that applicable laws are being followed. If a client...