Information Security is one of the major issues that concern the management of upcoming organizations which develop new technologies and software every day. It is imperative to secure business applications and maintain high-level, certificate-based security while operating sensitive tasks over the network. The network can be the intra-network., comprising of thousands of small networks, or the Internet. Transit information is vulnerable to security compromises over these networks without a suitable security infrastructure, which could do huge damages to the company involved.
One of the security solutions for distributed networks is the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). It uses the concept of Public Key, which is a cryptographic mechanism involving key pairs. Two keys are required here to encrypt and decrypt information over the two ends of a network, and it involves significant advantages such as Digital Signature and Long-term encryption. PKI is thus a software procedure for managing and using keys and security certificates efficiently. Certificate Authority (CA) forms the base of PKI. It proves the identity of the owner of the public key in form of a certificate, proof of which is signed and delivered by a CA (Ballad, Ballad & Banks, 2010).
PKI can act as a significant policy to protect the software signature of the company. It ensures secure gateway through public networks like Internet for the exchange of private data by assuring the identity of individuals through digital certificates. In addition to the data, the digital signature is also sent. The digital signature provides the sender’s public key, proving the authenticity of the sender and the integrity of the data. This is achieved by passing the data through the same hash algorithm as that used by the sender. PKI allows the choice of a trust provider wherein users can maintain individual certificates and the exchange of data between client and server only describes the certificate authentication. A user can also obtain a certificate from a trusted and recognized third party and authenticate himself to the server. PKI also offers nonrepudiation by means of the digital signature, which provides a strong proof of the sender’s identity to the recipient (Buchmann, Karatsiolis & Wiesmaie, 2013). PKI can also be integrated with Code Signing to create a digital signature which is based on the key cryptography of the contents of a program file. It is also useful for protecting information assets and the company can provide more valuable data online, thus strengthening the relationship of the organization with customers and suppliers. It is also highly available and scalable.
PKI software can be deployed in-house or can be outsourced to a reliable provider. This also includes the choice of public CA, private CA or an outsourced CA. In-house approach of PKI provides a high level of internal control over the sensitive area and prevents interoperability problems between the CA and the business applications. However it also has a high cost of license software and maintenance cost. In-house deployment has the following disadvantages that prevent the successful implementation of PKI, which includes proprietary software, limited physical security, and poor redundancy (Symantec, 2011). An organization deploying PKI in-house must be capable of providing support 24 X 7, with a well-equipped and qualified internal staff. Public PKI (or outsourced PKI), on the other hand, have many advantages like lower cost of ownership, reduced risks and rapid deployment. While it also has its disadvantages like - if the outsourced party unintentionally or intentionally revokes the root signature of the organization’s signing certificate, the certificates provided by the organization will be invalid – it offers several advantages over in-house PKI that includes lower impact on internal staff and stronger security.
References
Ballad, B., Ballad, T., & Banks, E. (2010). Access Control, Authentication, and Public Key Infrastructure. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Buchmann, J. A., Karatsiolis, E., & Wiesmaier, A. (2013). Introduction to Public Key Infrastructures . Springer Science & Business Media.
Symantec. (2011). Managed Public Key Infrastructure. Securing Your Business Applications. Symantec Corporation.
