7.3 - Public Key Infrastructure

Public key infrastructure contains programs, data formats, procedures, communication protocols, security policies, and public key cryptography working together. The public key establishes trust within an environment.

This ISO framework uses public key cryptography it sets up authentication across various networks and the Internet. Public key cryptography is alternatively named as asymmetric algorithms.

We need e-mail clients, e-mail servers, and e-mail messages, which together build a type of infrastructure—an e-mail infrastructure. PKI is made up of many different parts: certificate authorities, registration authorities, certificates, keys, and users. The following sections explain these parts and how they all work together.