Certificate Management Overview; Figure 169 System > Logging Options - ZyXEL Communications Vantage CNM User Manual

Vantage CNM User's Guide
Figure 169 System > Logging Options

20.8 Certificate Management Overview

Vantage CNM can use certificates (also called digital IDs) to authenticate users. Certificates
are based on public-private key pairs. A certificate contains the certificate owner's identity and
public key. Certificates provide a way to exchange public keys for use in authentication.
A Certification Authority (CA) issues certificates and guarantees the identity of each
certificate owner. There are commercial certification authorities like CyberTrust or VeriSign
and government certification authorities. You can use Vantage CNM to generate certification
requests that contain identifying information and public keys and then send the certification
requests to a certification authority.
In public-key encryption and decryption, each host has two keys. One key is public and can be
made openly available; the other key is private and must be kept secure. Public-key encryption
in general works as follows.
1 Tim wants to send a private message to Jenny. Tim generates a public key pair. What is
encrypted with one key can only be decrypted using the other.
2 Tim keeps the private key and makes the public key openly available.
3 Tim uses his private key to encrypt the message and sends it to Jenny.
4 Jenny receives the message and uses Tim's public key to decrypt it.
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