Certificates; Chapter 7 Certificates; Certificates Overview; What You Can Do In This Chapter - ZyXEL Communications PM7300-T0 User Manual

7.1 Certificates Overview

The PM7300-T0 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.

7.1.1 What You Can Do in this Chapter

• The Local Certificates screen lets you generate certification requests and import the PM7300-T0's CA-
signed certificates
• The Trusted CA screen lets you save the certificates of trusted CAs to the PM7300-T0
page 32).

7.2 What You Need to Know

The following terms and concepts may help as you read through this chapter.
Certification Authority
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. The certification authority uses its private key to sign certificates. Anyone can then use the
certification authority's public key to verify the certificates. You can use the PM7300-T0 to generate
certification requests that contain identifying information and public keys and then send the
certification requests to a certification authority.

7.3 Local Certificates

Click Security > Certificates to open the Local Certificates screen. Use this screen to view the PM7300-
T0's summary list of certificates, generate certification requests, and import signed certificates.
(Section 7.3 on page 28).
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(Section 7.4 on