Certificate Server Concepts

Welcome to the Microsoft® Certificate Server Concepts topic section. This section describes Certificate Server features and architecture, some usage scenarios, and an overview of digital certificates and authentication. This material should be reviewed before attempting to install and use Certificate Server.

This section contains:

• Usage Scenarios: Describes several common business scenarios in which Certificate Server is useful.
• Interoperability: Describes how Certificate Server's open interfaces and support for industry-standard certificate formats allow it to interoperate with other products that use digital certificates.
• Certificate Server Features: Explains about Certificate Server features such as adherence to standards, transport independence, scalability, and more.
• Certificate Server Architecture: Explains about the components of Certificate Server and how certificate requests are processed.
• Overview of Certificates and Authentication: Provides background information about public key cryptography including digital certificates, certificate authorities, client and server authentication, and more.

This section does not contain:

• Information about installing, configuring, administering or customizing Certificate Server; see Certificate Server Administrator's Guide.
• Information about writing software modules and applications using the Certificate Server interfaces; see Certificate Server Programmer's Reference.