Usage Types of PKI Certificates

PKI Certificate Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Introduction of PKI Certificate

∟Usage Types of PKI Certificates

This section describes PKI certificate types categorized according to their usages.

Depending on their usages: PKI certificates can be categorized into multiple types:

CA Certificates - Used by Certificate Authorities (CA) to sign other certificates.
Client Certificates, also called Client Authentication Certificates - Used by client side users/systems to authenticate themselves to remote servers.
Code Signing Certificates (CSC) - Used by software vendors to sign their software packages.
Document Signing Certificates (DSC) - Used by email users to sign and/or encrypt emails.
Email Certificates, also called Email Signing Certificates, S/MIME Certificates - Used by email users to sign and/or encrypt emails.
Ephemeral Certificates, also called DevOps Certificates - Used by development or test systems to provide temporary authentications. Ephemeral certificates are automatically generated and short-lived.
IoT Certificates, also called IoT Device Certificates - Used by IoT devices to authenticate device identities and secure communications between two devices.
Personal certificates, also called Personal Authentication Certificates - Used by end users to sign and/or encrypt digital documents. Personal certificates may also refer to certificates used to authenticate end users to remote service providers, instead using traditional passwords.
SSL/TLS Certificates, also called Website Certificates or Server Certificates - Used by Websites to authenticate their identity and secure Web page communications.
Verified Mark Certificates (VMC) - Mainly used by email servers to certify their logos, which are associated with their outgoing emails. Certified logos will be displayed in receiving email inboxes to help reducing phishing emails.

Certificates can also be categorized into 3 levels based on their locations in the certificate signing chain.

Root CA Certificates - Used to sign Intermediate CA Certificates, not End User Certificates.
Intermediate CA Certificates, also called Subordinate CA Certificates - Used to sign End User Certificates or other Intermediate CA Certificates.
End Entity Certificates - Used to identify end users, systems or organizations, and not allowed to sign other certificates.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Introduction of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

►Introduction of PKI Certificate

PKI Certificate File Formats

OpenSSL - Cryptography Toolkit

"openssl ca" - CA (Certificate Authority) Tool

Java "keytool" Commands and KeyStore Files

PKI Certificate Store

PKCS12 Certificate Bundle File

PKCS7 Certificate Chain File

PKI Certificate Related Terminology

References

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