Digital Certificates

A digital certificate is a form of electronic ID card that supports public key encryption technology. Each messaging participant generates a matched pair of encryption keys—a private key, which is never revealed or transmitted, and a public key, which is freely available to other participants. These keys are stored in a local file or repository called a keystore, and the public key is stored as part of a digital certificate. The certificate can be attached to a service operation to verify the sender's identity and to provide the recipient with the means to encode a response.

The following table lists the security technologies that require digital certificates and the digital certificate installation location for each of them. The table also lists the section in this topic that discusses installing digital certificates for each of the technologies:

Security Technology	Digital Certificate Installation Location	Section Describing How to Install Digital Certificates	Comments
SSL/TLS encryption.	Web server.	Setting Up Web Server SSL/TLS Encryption.	Secures web server-to-web server connections.
WS-Security.	Integration gateway.	Installing Integration Gateway-Based Digital Certificates.	Secures web server-to-web server connections.
Client authentication.	Integration gateway.	Installing Integration Gateway-Based Digital Certificates.	Secures application server-to-integration connections.
Nonrepudiation.	Application server.	Installing Application Server-Based Digital Certificates.	Authenticates sender and receiver.
Certificated-based node authentication.	Application server.	Installing Application Server-Based Digital Certificates.	Authenticates sender.