What are Digital Certificates and Digital Private/Public Key Pairs?
The purpose of Digital Certificates and Digital Private/Public Key Pairs is to digitally represent a person, an organisation or a computer. Many different software packages can create and manage digital certificates and/or digital key pairs for you and although there are standards for software developers to follow most developers have found it necessary to create their own “standard”. However all digital certificates and/or digital key pairs share the same properties and essentially work in the same manner. Digital Certificates and Digital Key Pairs are essentially the same thing. They are only distinguished by how they are presented to you by the software you are using. For example one application may ask you for your Digital Certificate where as another application may ask you for your Public Key. There are other subtle differences in the background but for the purposes of this explanation we shall say they are the same thing. In your key pair you have both a Public Key and Private K
