About Digital Certificate

A Digital Certificate is a cryptographically signed object that binds a public key and an identity. It enables the holder to establish encrypted and confidential communications by proving his/her identity to other people, web sites and network resources.

Certificates, who uniquely are associated with a private key, are issued by Certification Authorities. Once a message has been encrypted using a certificate, it can only be decrypted using corresponding private key.

A digital certificate is tamper-proof and cannot be forged, because is signed by the private key of the Certification Authority which issued it.

The certificate is public and can be exchanged freely, while the private key must be kept secure by the certificate owner.