A Certificate Authority (CA) is an entity which is trusted to validate and certify the identities of others. In reality a CA is a company which maintains a software package that can manage the requests, issuance and revocation of certificate files. A CA is created by installing a certificate management software package such […]

Since earliest history, man has had secrets to protect. As early as ancient Egypt, people were devising ways to exchange secret data. The art of encryption has evolved over time and played a vital role in history.
This article will explore modern cryptography techniques and look at how they are applied in computing technology […]

This article is the first in a series that will cover the design, implementation and management of a PKI. PKI systems have become more and more common in modern IT environments as more technologies are built to take advantage of the strong authentication provided by certificates.
What is a PKI?
A PKI is defined as “the […]

Installing Certificate Services on Windows 2000 is quite simple, though the choices available to you will again depend on your environment. For the purpose of this illustration I will walk through the process of creating a Standalone Root CA – mainly because my computer is not configured as a domain member at the moment. Since […]

Before covering the installation of Certificate Services in Windows 2000, it is important to understand the different types of Certificate Authorities that can be installed. A root CA is the top link in a chain of CAs, while a subordinate CA is a downlevel server that has one or more CAs above it (and eventually […]

Of all the many services that Windows 2000 offers, one of the least understood is probably Certificate Services. While it may seem that anything that has to do with cryptography is unnecessarily complex, understanding the main elements is certainly not difficult. Certificate Services exist for one primary purpose – to help in the creation of […]