A digital certificate is a kind of electronic register which is created and based on information describing the protection characteristics of a certain identity in a network (private or public). The certificate is issued by a third party entity – a certificate authority (CA) authorized to issue and manage protection characteristics and public keys for information encryption. These digital certificates contain identifying details such as name, serial number, expiry date, copy of the public key used to decrypt messages, and digital signature (as opposed to digital certificate) of the certificate issuer.
With Comda Encrypt end users do not need to change their behavior in order to secure their files. The system is designed to also be adopted and used by non-technical users with minimal training only.
A digital signature is a kind of electronic signature which can be used to identify the entity sending the information or the document signatory, and thus it is possible to guarantee that the information has not undergone any changes since it was signed. Digital signatures cannot be copied and an element of time can be incorporated in them.
The receiver can verify that the digital certificate is in fact valid and real by checking its contents. Presently, the leading standard for electronic certificates is called X.509 and most digital certificates issued today meet this standard. Digital certificates can be saved in a database that contains the computer registry so that other verified users can search for the public key.
The PKI infrastructure works on the assumption that using an encrypted public key is the infrastructure basis since it constitutes the most popular user authentication and data encryption method. Traditional encryption entails creating and sharing a secret key for encrypting and deciphering information. Using this encryption method with the help of a secret key presents a significant disadvantage – if and when this key is exposed, the encrypted information can be easily deciphered. Due to this reason, access by public key and PKI infrastructure encryption is preferable to traditional encryption.