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MCTS - Exam 70-536: Public Key Infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure

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Making Sense of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)


A term used in computing and development cryptography, for a collection of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures that are very much needed in order to create, manage, store, distribute, and revoke digital certificates.

It is an overall Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) communications, transportation, availability management dynamic and structure, for distributing, managing and revoking certifications in an organization. 

This has to do with key management and asymmetric encryption. It helps enterprise and businesses to implement a public-key infrastructure, certificate services (Windows Server) distribution, management and revoking of keys and certificates in an organization. Developers do not typically have the responsibility for doing so or programming a PKI.

There is a list of critical extensions in the certificate template, as well as Cryptographic service providers, key-specs, enrolment access, expiration period, key usage, extended key usage details, maximum issuance  depth, overlap period and more. Some of the key skills and know how here would include things like knowing how to How to configure and operate a Windows certificate authority, with operational scenarios, custom configuration information, sample commands, and even  practices. When encrypting and decrypting data,  digital signatures  enable the use of public keys to verify file signatures and signing with private keys for example. Verification of source and creation of a file by a certain user is made possible through this. Public keys are exchanged at the beginning of an encryption/decryption cycle for example, from/with and between client/server.

Key Exam Points

  1. Use PKI for C# and VB, review key chapters highlighting what it is and how to access, read, use, manage and change it (if required)
  2. For the exam, study practical, real-life, illustrative, practice and lab examples for encryption, cryptography, as it pertains to PKI, public access key infrastructure,  that help you to gain a better understanding of this topic

Related Terms

Asymmetric encryption, symmetric encryption, SSL, HTTPS

 

This article is based on the 2nd edition of the Microsoft .Net Framework Application Training Kit with the purpose to help 70-536 Exam takers to succeed. I constantly look for ways to improve the content.   Please leave a comment about this article or drop me a message if you would like to see changes for this site.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 March 2009 11:02  
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