Defining Certificate Authority and How It Works

A certificate authority can help you prove that you own a digital entity like a website or an email address. This same organization can issue cryptographic keys used to protect information from hackers and other bad actors.

Some people use certificate authorities for human verification. After establishing a partnership with a recognized company, these people can do things like sign up for checking accounts or cross borders without burdensome paperwork.

But most people and organizations use a certification authority to help them prove digital ownership and protect critical assets. We’ll focus on that use case here.

What is a certificate authority?

As the name implies, a certificate authority issues certificates to authorized people or organizations. You may not know these companies explicitly, and if you've never set up a website, you've never contacted them directly. But every time you visit a protected website, you need certificate authorities to help you.

A certificate authority provides two things:

• Digital certificates: These small data files contain identity cr