Overview

You can use digital certificates in place of preshared keys for IKE negotiations. For more information about IKE, see IKE Overview in Configuring IPsec.

Digital Certificate Terms and Acronyms

Table 23 describes terms and abbreviations that are used in this discussion of digital certificates.

Table 23: Digital Certificate Terms and Acronyms

Term or Abbreviation	Description
3DES	Triple DES encryption/decryption algorithm
Base64	Method used to encode certificate requests and certificates before they are sent to or from the CA
CA	Certificate authority; an organization that creates digital certificates
Certificate	Binds a person or entity to a public key using a digital signature
CRL	Certificate revocation list; a list of certificates that a CA has revoked
ESP	Encapsulating Security Payload; provides data integrity, data confidentiality and, optionally, sender's authentication
IKE	Internet Key Exchange
PKCS	Public-Key Cryptography Standards; a series of standards established by RSA Laboratories
PKCS10	PKCS #10; describes a syntax for certification requests
Root CA	CA that signs the certificates of subordinate CAs
Root certificate	Self-signed public key certificate for a root CA; root certificates are used to verify other certificates
RSA	Rivest-Shamir-Adleman encryption algorithm
SA	Security association; the set of security parameters that dictate how IPsec processes a packet, including encapsulation protocol and session keys. A single secure tunnel uses multiple SAs.
SCEP	Simple certificate enrollment protocol; used to submit requests and to download certificates and CRLs