Certificates Glossary

Browse 20 certificates terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

20 Certificates Terms

Certificate Chain
The ordered set of certificates linking an end-entity certificate back to a trusted root through one or more intermediate issuers. Correct certificate chains...
Certificate Management
The administration of digital certificates, including issuance, storage, deployment, renewal, revocation, and inventory. Poor certificate management creates...
Certificate Revocation
The invalidation of a certificate before its normal expiration, usually because the private key was compromised, the certificate was misissued, or the subject...
Certificate Signing Request
A message generated by an entity seeking a certificate, containing identifying information and a public key for the certificate authority to sign. The CSR is a...
CSR
Short for certificate signing request in security contexts, the message containing identifying information and a public key that is submitted to a certificate...
Digital Certificate
Digital Certificate is a signed data structure that binds an identity to a public key for trust decisions. Security teams use it to enforce trust, reduce...
Keystore
A protected file, service, or subsystem used to store cryptographic keys, certificates, or trust anchors. Keystores are common in Java, mobile platforms, cloud...
Machine Identity
A credential-backed digital identity assigned to a device, server, container, service, or workload so systems can authenticate and authorize it automatically....
Multi-Domain Certificate
A digital certificate that covers more than one domain name, usually by listing multiple subject alternative names in the certificate. Multi-domain...
Peer Certificate
The digital certificate presented by the other side of a secure connection, such as a server certificate shown to a client or a client certificate shown to a...
Pem File
A text-based container format commonly used to store certificates, private keys, and related cryptographic material. It shows up in application security,...
PKI
PKI, or Public Key Infrastructure, is the framework of hardware, software, policies, and procedures that manages the creation, distribution, storage, and...
PKI Certificate
A digital certificate issued within a public key infrastructure to bind an identity to a public key. It shows up in application security, identity,...
Private CA
A certificate authority operated internally by an organization rather than by a public commercial CA, used to issue certificates for internal services,...
Public Certificate
A certificate issued by a publicly trusted certificate authority so standard browsers and clients will accept it without custom trust configuration. Public...
Revocation
The invalidation of a credential, token, certificate, or access right before its normal expiration because it is no longer trusted or should no longer be...
Root Certificate
A self-signed top-level certificate trusted as the anchor for a certificate chain. It shows up in application security, identity, infrastructure, or incident...
SSL Pinning
A client-side trust technique that accepts only a specific certificate or public key for a remote service. It shows up in application security, identity,...
TLS Mutual Authentication
A TLS mode in which both client and server present certificates and verify each other. It shows up in application security, identity, infrastructure, or...
X.509
The standard format that defines the structure of digital certificates used in PKI and TLS. It shows up in application security, identity, infrastructure, or...

Related Topics