Overview

The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a general security infrastructure used to provide information security through public key technologies.

PKI, also called asymmetric key infrastructure, uses a key pair to encrypt and decrypt the data. The key pair consists of a private key and a public key. The private key must be kept secret but the public key needs to be distributed. Data encrypted by one of the two keys can only be decrypted by the other.

A key problem with PKI is how to manage the public keys. PKI employs the digital certificate mechanism to solve this problem. The digital certificate mechanism binds public keys to their owners, helping distribute public keys in large networks securely.

With digital certificates, the PKI system provides network communication and e-commerce with security services such as user authentication, data non-repudiation, data confidentiality, and data integrity.

HPE's PKI system provides certificate management for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).