{"id":12038,"date":"2020-02-12T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T18:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/?p=12038"},"modified":"2024-05-20T16:20:12","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T20:20:12","slug":"what-is-pki-a-crash-course-on-public-key-infrastructure-pki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/what-is-pki-a-crash-course-on-public-key-infrastructure-pki\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is PKI? A Crash Course on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ever wonder what public key infrastructure (PKI) is and how it works? It\u2019s only one of the most critical systems used to ensure authentication, data integrity, and privacy\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The world of cryptography is full of brilliant ideas, and\none of those ideas is public\nkey infrastructure (PKI)<\/a>. But what is PKI and what does it entail for\norganizations and data privacy? In a nutshell, it\u2019s a system of processes,\npolicies, authentication, and technologies that govern encryption and is ultimately\nwhat protects our text messages, emails, passwords, credit card information, and\ncute cat photos\u2026 okay, you get the point, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PKI is an infrastructure that has become an essential\npart of our everyday lives \u2014 and the overwhelming majority of us don’t even\nknow what it is! Well, that’s something that saddens all of us here at Hashed\nOut, and that’s why we try to break down complicated, nerdy stuff into an\nunderstandable form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what is PKI? In this post, I’ll introduce you to the\nart and science that is public key infrastructure (PKI) and everything that it\nentails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s hash it out.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<\/span><\/span>\n\n\n

The \u201cKey\u201d Problem in Conventional Encryption <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But before we move on to answering the \u201cwhat is PKI?\u201d\nquestion and talking about how it works, let\u2019s first consider a simple\nscenario. Let’s say there’s a spy named Alice who wants to send a confidential\npiece of information to Bob, her senior officer. She can\u2019t send this\ninformation in plaintext as enemies could easily intercept and read\/tamper with\nit. That’s why she must send this information in an unreadable form that Bob\nwill be able to derive, but their enemies won’t. In other words, Alice will\nneed to encrypt the information.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But here comes a problem. If Alice locks (encrypts) the\nmessage using a key (some logic), then how will Bob decrypt it? He must have\nthe key with him, right? To give the key to Bob, there\u2019s no option other than\nmeeting with him face-to-face, which is totally impractical (to say the least)\nor to send it via courier and risk it being intercepted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such an encryption method is problematic not only in the\nphysical world but also in the virtual world. Every time two computers want to\ncommunicate securely, they’d have to agree on a single encryption key every\nsingle interaction. This is a mathematical process and takes time. And if\nthere’s a server (for example, a bank) that communicates with multiple users,\nthen the server will have to perform a computational process for each client\ntransaction, and that would slow it down even further. All of these things\ninvolve a variety of complex processes and agreements that must be handled at\nmicro speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s where PKI comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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