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certificate authority (CA)
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Third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates
used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. The CA guarantees
the identity of the individual or device that presents the digital certificate.
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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
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Protocol used to publish and receive information on the Web, such as
text and graphics files.
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Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Sockets Layer (HTTPS)
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Protocol similar to HTTP with an added encryption layer that encrypts
and decrypts user page requests and pages that are returned by a Web server.
HTTPS is used for secure communication, such as payment transactions.
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Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM)
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Technique for securely exchanging electronic mail over a public medium.
PEM is based upon public key infrastructure (PKI) standards like X.509 certificates.
SSL certificates are partly based on PEM and end in the suffix .pem.
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RSA
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Public key cipher that can be used for encrypting messages and making
digital signatures. RSA uses a well-known encryption and authentication algorithm
that is a part of popular Web browsers.
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Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
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Protocol that encrypts security information before transmitting data
across a network. SSL requires two keys to encrypt data—a public key
known to everyone and a private or secret key known only to the recipient
of the message—and an authentication certificate. Most popular Web browsers
support SSL.
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SSL certificate
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Secure electronic identifier conforming to the X.509 standard, definitively
identifying an individual, system, company, or organization. In addition to
identification data, the digital certificate contains a serial number, a copy
of the certificate holder’s public key, the identity and digital signature
of the issuing certificate authority (CA), and an expiration date.
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