CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY

Domain	Definition
Computing	Certificate Authority (CA or "Trusted Third Party") An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organisations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organisation such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity. The process uses public key cryptography to create a "network of trust". If I want to prove my identity to you, I ask a CA (who you trust to have verified my identity) to encrypt a hash of my signed key with their private key. Then you can use the CA's public key to decrypt the hash and compare it with a hash you calculate yourself. Hashes are used to decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The hash function must be cryptographically strong, e.g. MD5. (http://home.netscape.com/comprod/server_central/support/faq/certificate_faq.html#11). (1998-03-30). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Commercial Usage: CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY

Domain	Title
High Tech	Certificate Authority 6.5 (reference) (more camera examples; more video game examples; more computer examples; more electronic examples; more software examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Non-Fiction Usage: CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY

Subject	Topic	Quote
Business		Another Hungarian company, ProfiTrade 90 has also developed its own Certificate Authority product, "jSure" being compliant with the X.509 international standard of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as well as with Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) and Identrus infrastructure. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

Frequency of Internet Keywords: CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY

Alternative Orthography: CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY

Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

HTML Code (1990) (references)

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

Expression	Frequency per Day
certificate authority	51
ssl certificate authority	5
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY