Understanding PKI

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a set or collection of various technologies that are used to provide origin authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality to a user on a network. PKI takes advantage of asymmetric encryption and uses the public and private key pairs for data encryption.

In PKI, the public key is usually associated with a digital signature to add trust and validate details about the owner of the certificate. The following is the key life cycle in PKI:

1. Generation of the key: This process determines the cipher and the key size.
2. Certificate generation: This process creates the digital certificate and assigns it to a person or device.
3. Distribution: The distribution process is responsible for securely distributing the key to the user or the device.
4. Storage: This process is responsible for securely storing the key to prevent any unauthorized access to it.
5. Revocation: A certificate or key may be revoked if it is compromised...