by 
David Close, Chief Solutions Architect
Have you ever visited a website and noticed a little padlock icon in the address bar?
That tiny padlock signals that your connection is secure and your personal information is protected from prying eyes.
A PKI certificate is like that padlock – it verifies and confirms that you're communicating with a trusted digital source. Just as the padlock builds trust in online transactions, a PKI certificate ensures secure connections by authenticating identities and encrypting data.
Let's explore more about PKI certificates.
What is a PKI Certificate?
The proliferation of connected devices and cloud services has increased the number of digital certificates organizations must manage to secure digital communications.
This complexity of managing an ever-increasing number of certificates can overwhelm any organization. If not handled efficiently, it can result in unauthorized access, security breaches, and data loss.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Certificates form a framework that employs public key cryptography to secure digital communications and manage digital identities.
These certificates are electronic documents linking a user or device's identity to a corresponding pair of cryptographic keys, an asymmetric key pair.
Key pairs consist of a public key for data encryption and a private key for decryption. Digital certificates contain the public key and verify identity through certificate authorities (CAs).
How Does a PKI Certificate Work?
The function of PKI starts with setting up a CA, which is tasked with generating and issuing digital certificates.
The CA generates a root certificate authority using secure cryptographic devices, ensuring its private key is kept offline for security purposes. The root CA forms the foundational trust within the PKI system and validates the subordinate issuing CAs that carry out most certificate issuance activities.
These issuing CAs provide signed certificates to users, devices, and applications, creating a trusted circle that facilitates secure interactions. PKI includes renewal and revocation mechanisms throughout these certificates' lifecycle to maintain security integrity.
Organizations implementing PKI must navigate hardware procurement and cloud service integration challenges while establishing key management policies and workflows.
PKI Certificates Benefits
Root of Trust (RoT)
Using hardware-based security measures, PKI certificates establish a secure foundation for digital interactions.
They employ hardware security modules (HSMs) to validate system integrity and protect cryptographic keys from unauthorized access and tampering.
Certificate Management
PKI certificates facilitate the creation and oversight of extensive certificate hierarchies with defined expiration periods.
They automate issuing, renewing, and revoking certificates, guaranteeing continuous oversight and decreasing the likelihood of expired or misconfigured certificates.
Certificate Revocation
Certificate revocation enables tracking and revocation of certificates through certificate revocation lists (CRLs) and the online certificate status protocol (OCSP).
CRLs are lists of revoked digital certificates, while OCSP allows real-time verification of a certificate's status to confirm its validity.
PKI Certificates Use Cases
Code Signing
Code signing secures software code distribution and establishes trust among applications.
It protects users by applying a digital signature to the software code, verifying the publisher's identity, and ensuring that the code remains unaltered after signing, thus guarding against malicious software.
EMV CA
PKI certificates are integral to EMV-compatible smart cards. Issuing certificates and digital signatures allows validation during transactions at ATMs and POS terminals.
This trusted third party within the EMV payment card framework ensures secure communication and transactions.
Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
PKI certificates help authenticate domain names using digital signatures through asymmetric encryption, ensuring domain trust and security.
They do this by signing DNS data with a private key, enabling resolvers to verify the data's integrity and origin using the public key.
This helps prevent DNS cache poisoning, or DNS spoofing, attacks in which fake information is inserted into a DNS or web cache to divert traffic from a legitimate server to a malicious/dangerous server.
Next Steps
As organizations accelerate their digital transformation projects, implementing a robust Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is essential for securing digital communications and protecting data. A PKI certificate is a cornerstone of digital trust, enabling the authentication of identities and the encryption of sensitive information.
Proper PKI implementation includes integrating a Hardware Security Module (HSM) for managing and securing cryptographic keys. HSMs ensure that private keys are generated, stored, and accessed in a secure, tamper-proof environment, reducing the risk of unauthorized access or breaches. This approach strengthens overall security, enhances compliance with industry regulations, and streamlines key lifecycle management.
To discover how integrating a PKI certificate with an HSM can help your organization securely manage identities, protect sensitive data, and achieve operational efficiency, consider exploring trusted PKI and HSM solutions tailored to your needs.