What is a Certificate Authority?

A certificate authority is an organization, channel or entity which issues digital certificates to websites. These authorities provide the user or the accessing party of the website a fair idea about the security of the website.

The SSL (Secure Socket Layers) Certificate is issued to a website by a Certificate Authority which helps the user in getting information regarding the security provided by the website which is being accessed by them.

When a user opens a website he/she has to be careful regarding the security of the website, because malicious hackers and organisations may hack into the insecure website and steal essential information of the user and use it for other unethical activities like stealing credit or debit card information, etc.

Now one must think about how to ensure that the Certificate Authority providing the security certificate is trustworthy or not. Let’s find out.

 

How to Trust a Certificate Authority –

 

Various OS (Operating Systems), browsers, mobile devices, etc. are the ones who authorize a Certificate Authority’s authenticity. To get authorized by them and become a member a Certificate Authority must meet their respective criteria, only then the CA is accepted as a member.

The number of CAs authorized by the various government or private organizations is very less and hence the experience i.e. longer the CA has been operational, more is the trust value of the CA. For CAs to be even more trustworthy they need to have a backward compatibility i.e. they should be compatible with the older versions of the browsers and specifically with old mobile models.

Now one must think about what is the use of having a Certificate Authority? So let us see why do we need one.

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