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certificate authority (CA)
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Third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates
used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. The
CA guarantees the identity of the individual or device that presents
the digital certificate.
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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
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Protocol used to publish and receive information on the Web,
such as text and graphics files.
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Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Sockets
Layer (HTTPS)
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Protocol similar to HTTP with an added encryption layer that
encrypts and decrypts user page requests and pages that are returned
by a Web server. HTTPS is used for secure communication, such as payment
transactions.
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Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM)
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Technique for securely exchanging electronic mail over a public
medium. PEM is based upon public key infrastructure (PKI) standards
like X.509 certificates. SSL certificates are partly based on PEM
and end in the suffix .pem.
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RSA
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Public key cipher that can be used for encrypting messages and
making digital signatures. RSA uses a well-known encryption and authentication
algorithm that is a part of popular Web browsers.
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Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
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Protocol that encrypts security information before transmitting
data across a network. SSL requires two keys to encrypt data—a
public key known to everyone and a private or secret key known only
to the recipient of the message—and an authentication certificate.
Most popular Web browsers support SSL.
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SSL certificate
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Secure electronic identifier conforming to the X.509 standard,
definitively identifying an individual, system, company, or organization.
In addition to identification data, the digital certificate contains
a serial number, a copy of the certificate holder’s public key,
the identity and digital signature of the issuing certificate authority
(CA), and an expiration date.
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