Private CA

Noun · Security & Infosec

Definitions

  1. A certificate authority operated internally by an organization rather than by a public commercial CA, used to issue certificates for internal services, devices, users, or mutual TLS. A private CA gives more control over trust and issuance, but it also creates operational responsibility for key protection, revocation, and lifecycle management.

    In plain English: An organization's own certificate authority for issuing internal certificates.

    Example: "The company used a private CA to issue client certificates for service-to-service authentication across the production mesh."

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