?– Support authentication via certificates loaded on smart cards.
?– Authenticate network connections using 802.1x.
?–? Encrypt user files, as used by the Encrypted File System (EFS).
PKI can be used to facilitate secure communications or to validate an identity in
many more situations as well. In general, PKI is an ideal solution when you need very
secure communications. The security of PKI relies on the security of the private keys and
the number of bits used for encryption, however. For example, using 128-bit encryption
may be a bit weak by today??™s standards, so you might want to use 4096-bit or higher encryption
to make it that much more difficult to crack. The downside, however, is that the
higher the encryption, the more time it will take to encrypt and decrypt the data.
DIGITAL SIGNATURES
Digital signatures don??™t prevent data from being read. Instead, encryption is used to
digitally tag the message to guarantee its authenticity. Most people think digital signatures
act like regular signatures??”that is, the signature is the same whenever it??™s used
and forms a basis for comparison. The reality, however, is that when you apply your
digital signature on some data such as an e-mail message, that signature is different each
and every time you use it.
Digital signatures work by passing the data that you want to sign through a hashing
algorithm that is used to generate a message digest.
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