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Stone Wichmann posted an update 3 years, 3 months ago
The Digital Certificate Authority has brought to the forefront the need for management solutions that can ensure the continued availability of high quality certificates. Digital certificates are those issued by the Certification Board for Digital Certificates (DCA). These high quality certificates are issued by recognized organizations such as the Information Security Council (ISC), NICE, and PCI Security Solutions, among others. Management solutions allow users to maintain and obtain a record of all digital certificates that have been registered on a server managed by the DCA. startups offers the ability to create new digital certificates and update existing ones.
The DCA relies on a set of technical strategies to ensure the consistent availability of its digital certificates and to keep them in sync with the latest requirements of the global business community. One such strategy is known as the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). This system provides the backbone for digital certificate management. Another system, known as the Application Service Provider (ASP) is an enabler of the PKI system. An application service provider is a company that facilitates the implementation and maintenance of PKI. The DAA additionally includes a Certification Management Scheme (CMS), to help businesses and organizations achieve certification goals through the certification process.
The digital certificates issued by the DCA are normally referred to as digital certificates or digital signatures. A digital signature is a temporary or permanent string of alphanumeric characters, which is computed using the Diffie-Calibration algorithm. A certificate that contains one or more digital signatures will be considered acceptable by the Certification Authorities. Typically, the Certification Authorities store and maintain certificate files for each type of domain. Therefore, organizations must contact their respective CA in order to request certificates for services such as web design, email address checking, and issuer verification.
startups and Updates (Certification Database Automation) is a feature of DCA solutions that automates the certificate installation and updating process. It eliminates the manual labor involved in reviewing certificates and manually installing or updating them. The main advantage of such a solution is time savings. With the help of CMS, the organization can save about half the time it usually takes to update the digital certificates, thanks to automation. This means that with CMS, there will be more time to focus on other business functions.
Another advantage of DCA solutions is the fact that they can seamlessly integrate with Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft Certificate Manager (MCM). This means that you can create, store, retrieve, and manage digital certificates without knowing any technical programming languages. For instance, organizations that use a certificate repository can integrate the PKI database with the IIS to create new, or check the existing ones, with a few clicks. The organization will also be able to obtain the certificates from the repository with a simple search.
As is evident from the list of advantages, using DCA solutions has a lot of advantages for organizations. However, the use of this solution also has its share of disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is associated with the use of certificates that are not stored in the organization’s database. These outdated certificates are prone to be rejected during outages or maintenance. In startups to this, the maintenance cost involved in maintaining the PKI database may be too high for some organizations.
Another disadvantage of using DCA solutions is the possibility of information breaches because an unauthorized person can modify the digital certificates. For instance, if a non-authorized person accesses the CA certificate, the certificate will be deemed as invalid and the corresponding entry will be printed on the website. Therefore, startups need to take certain measures to ensure that the digital certificates lifecycle is maintained properly.
There are startups for controlling the digital certificates lifecycle. However, most organizations opt for PKI as it offers flexibility, reliability, security, and compliance. With the help of PKI certificate management solutions, organizations can ensure that they maintain control over their certificates at an affordable cost. This helps them reduce maintenance costs and implement faster digital certificate management programs. These management solutions are also available online so organizations can easily get certificate approvals and manage their certificates at a lower cost.