What is public key infrastructure (PKI)?
Public key infrastructure (PKI) is, as the name suggests, a type of data security infrastructure designed around public key cryptography. More precisely, PKI is a system for managing digital certificates. Great—but what does that really mean?Digital certificates are electronic files that bind identifiable information of an application or machine to an asymmetric key pair.These asymmetric key pairs are “asymmetric” because they consist of a public key, which encrypts data, and a private key which decrypts it. In addition to identifiable information, digital certificates also include a public key. This public key, when certified by its assigned private key, authenticates the identifiable information in the certificate. This, finally, authenticates the identity of a user, device, document, message, or other entity on a network.
