Certification Authority

The CA's public key is known to every user of the network. This permits anyone wishing to authenticate a certificate to follow the same procedure for authenticating a message. The CA's public key is available in certificate format so that it, too, can be verified. The major commercial application for CAs is to authenticate businesses and the employees of those businesses. SunCA and SunCAglobal are Sun Microsystems' certification authority in the Internet Commerce Group (ICG).