CA Certificate: What is a CA Certificate? CA or Certificate Authority is an entity (organization or company) that validates the websites, email addresses and other digital fronts and then binds cryptographic keys by issuing special electronic documents called digital certificates.
You can find more about certificates, explore the types used for academic purposes, professional purposes and more.
What Does a CA Certificate do?
In today’s digital age, large amounts of data are exchanged on the interwebs every single minute. Some of these data are quite sensitive and will have dire consequences if it falls into the wrong hands. Therefore, digital certificates aims to address these issues by providing:
- Authentication: by acting as the credential to verify the identity that it is issued to.
- Integrity: by ensuring that the signed documents are not changed during transit by unauthorized parties
- Encryption: by ensuring that the sent communications remain indecipherable and secure when sent over open or insecure networks.
How Does a CA Certificate Work?
There are many different types of digital certificates but the most common are the server certificates which see usage in web servers. An applicant for a digital certificate will create a pair of secure keys which comprises a public key and a private key. Furthermore, an encoded text file called certificate signing request (CSR) is also generated along with the keys. It contains information about the public key as well as other details such as the domain name and email addresses. After the generation of the keys and CSR, the applicant sends it to the Certificate authority, who will independently verify if the information present on it is accurate. If everything is found to be in accordance, the certificate is digitally signed and a private key is generated. This is then sent to the applicant.
When a third party is presented with the signed certificate the recipient can confirm the Certificate Authority’s digital signature through the Certificate authority’s public key. Moreover, the certificate can be used by the recipient to confirm that the signed content was sent by an entity that has the corresponding private key – which means that the information was not changed or manipulated after it was signed.
FAQ’s on CA Certificate
Question 1.
What is a CA Certificate?
Answer:
CA is the abbreviation for Certificate Authority – which is an entity that validates websites, email addresses and other digital content, and then binds cryptographic keys by issuing special electronic documents called digital certificates. This is important when sending or receiving data on the internet.
Question 2.
How Do I Get a CA Signed Certificate?
Answer:
One can acquire a CA certificate by purchasing it through SSL vendors or SSL Certificate providers.
Question 3.
What is the use of a CA certificate?
Answer:
CA certificates are used to authenticate the CA signature on the server certificate, which is required before launching a secure connection.
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