Emmanuel Konan
PKI: certificate authorities and lifecycle management
A public key infrastructure organizes certificate issuance and validation. Certification authorities issue certificates; applications use configured trust anchors to decide which issuers to accept.
Setting up a PKI involves deciding:
- Which identities and services it covers.
- How trust anchors are distributed.
- How CA keys are protected.
- Who can request, approve, renew or revoke certificates.
- How the service is monitored and recovered after a failure or compromise.
The guide introduces the components. The private PKI lab covers a small Step-CA setup.