Requiring Authentication; Using Certificates For Authentication; Server Authentication; Client Authentication - Netscape ENTREPRISE SERVER 6.1 - 04-2002 ADMINISTRATOR Administrator's Manual

Requiring Authentication

• Considering Additional Security Issues
Requiring Authentication
Authentication is the process of confirming an identity. In the context of network
interactions, authentication is the confident identification of one party by another
party. Certificates are one way of supporting authentication.

Using Certificates for Authentication

A certificate consists of digital data that specifies the name of an individual,
company, or other entity, and certifies that the public key, included in the
certificate, belongs to that entity. Both clients and servers can have certificates.
A certificate is issued and digitally signed by a Certificate Authority, or CA. The
CA can be a company that sells certificates over the Internet, or it can be a
department responsible for issuing certificates for your company's intranet or
extranet. You decide which CAs you trust enough to serve as verifiers of other
people's identities.
In addition to a public key and the name of the entity identified by the certificate, a
certificate also includes an expiration date, the name of the CA that issued the
certificate, and the "digital signature" of the issuing CA.
NOTE

Server Authentication

Server authentication refers to the confident identification of a server by a client;
that is, identification of the organization assumed to be responsible for the server at
a particular network address.

Client Authentication

Client authentication refers to the confident identification of a client by a server;
that is, identification of the person assumed to be using the client software. Clients
can have multiple certificates, much like a person might have several different
pieces of identification.
88 Netscape Enterprise Server Administrator's Guide • April 2002 (Draft)
A server certificate must be installed before encryption can be
activated.