382Managing Keys and Certificates

Public Key Infrastructures

A public-key infrastructure (PKI) is a system of digital certificates and certification authorities that verify and authenti- cate the validity of each party involved in a transaction through the use of public key cryptography. To have a PKI, the WSS switch requires the following:

A public key

A private key

Digital certificates

A CA

A secure place to store the private key

A PKI enables you to securely exchange and validate digital certificates between WSSs, servers, and users so that each device can authenticate itself to the others.

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Nortel Networks 2300 manual Public Key Infrastructures