Digital certificates are used in a great variety of networking client and server applications. You can’t have a secure network solution without digital certificates. For many network admins, certificates and PKI are a bit magic, a bit trial and error, and a bit “I’ll keep pushing buttons until it works and then I stop and lock it down”.

The fact is that once you have the facts, certificates and certificate authentication and security actually begin to make sense. The problem is that much of the writing on certificates assumes that you already understand how they work and they just restate information to people who also know the material.

Jan De Clercq did a good job in putting together an introduction to certificates. In this article you’ll get a nice overview of digital certificates and how that work. You’ll also receive a good grounding in certificate vocabulary.

Check out the article at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc700805.aspx

HTH,

Tom

Thomas W Shinder, M.D., MCSE
Sr. Consultant / Technical Writer
Prowess Consulting www.prowessconsulting.com
PROWESS CONSULTING documentation | integration | virtualization
Email: tshinder@isaserver.org
MVP — Forefront Edge Security (ISA/TMG/IAG)