Security precautions

What is a digital certificate?

A digital certificate is a certificate issued by a trusted third party called a certification authority (CA) to verify the identity of the certificate holder.

What is a digital signature?

A digital signature is a mechanism that is used to verify that a particular digital document or a message is authentic. It provides the receiver with a guarantee that the message was actually generated by the sender and it was not modified by a third party during the sending.

What information does a digital certificate contain?

A serial number that is used to uniquely identify the certificate, the individual or the entity identified by the certificate The algorithm that is used to create the signature The Certification Authority that verifies the information in the certificate The date that the certificate is valid from and the date that the certificate expires The public key and the thumbprint algorithm (to make sure that the certificate itself is not modified)

What is encryption?

Before data is sent, it will be encrypted to the point that it will not be recognisable. An algorithm is used to scramble the data and is known as encoding. Once the data gets to the destination system it must be decoded (unscrambled).

Why use encryption?

Encryption ensures that data being sent across a network is kept secure.

what is Public and private key encryption (asymmetric encryption)?

Public key encryption is used to transfer data but is actually often used to transfer the key needed to allow symmetric encryption to take place. This is because symmetric encryption is a much faster method than using public and private keys.

What is symmetric key encryption?

Symmetric key encryption is an encryption system in which the sender and receiver of a message share a single, common key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. The success of this method of encryption depends on the need to keep the key secret and on the method for passing the key from one system to another.

What three algorithms does the digital structure use?

To generate a public key/private key pair, it uses a key generation algorithm. It then uses a signing algorithm, which generates an encrypted signature using the private key and the message. It uses a signature verifying algorithm to verify a given message, using the public key to decrypt the signature.

What are the two methods of encryption?

symmetric key encryption using one secret key public key (asymmetric) encryption using two keys - one public key and one private key