11.2.3. Creating and managing certificates

When an organization wishes to create a certificate, it has to perform the following:

Basically the CA has the following functions:

Checks the identity of everyone requesting a certificate.
Confirms the identity of a user by its signature.
Monitors the validity of issued certificates (see Section 11.2.4, CRLs below).

Tip
Although to efficiently use certificates over the Internet they need to be signed by well-known Certificate Authorities, this is not required if they are used only locally within an organization. For such cases, the organization itself can create a local (internal) CA and sign the certificate of this CA. This CA having a self-signed certificate (thus it becomes the local root CA) can then be used to sign the certificates used only internally.

Tip

Although to efficiently use certificates over the Internet they need to be signed by well-known Certificate Authorities, this is not required if they are used only locally within an organization. For such cases, the organization itself can create a local (internal) CA and sign the certificate of this CA. This CA having a self-signed certificate (thus it becomes the local root CA) can then be used to sign the certificates used only internally.

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Proxedo Network Security Suite 1.0 Administrator Guide

11.2. PKI Basics

11.2.3. Creating and managing certificates