A certificate (also known as public key certificate, digital certificate or identity certificate) is an electronic document which uses a digital signature to bind together a public key with an identity -- information such as the name of a company.
The certificate can be used to verify that a public key belongs to the identity that it claims to belong to and therefore is identifiable. Public keys are encrypted information that can be read and validated without having knwoledge of the password.
For many applications, the certificate is used to notify the computer that the application may be trusted and does not need to be prompted for or validated each time. Certificates are generally installled once and can have expiration dates that dictate their lifetime. In addition, the issuer of the certificate may renew (extend) the certificate or may revoke it.
IAEST Solution applications that utilize certificates are those that are downloaded and run on-demand from the internet. Typically these are XBAP or Silverlight based applications.
The certificates that we use may be of 3 types as follows:
- A customer provided certificate.
- An IAEST Solutions general certificate.
- An application specific certificate.
If you have provided IAEST with a certificate then the publisher, expiration, etc. is under your control.
If the certificate is an IAEST Solutions general certificate type then the publisher will be IAEST Solutions, LLC. Expiration dates may vary by certificate and/or application and may be extended via the web.
Most of the certificates that our applications will utilize are application specific. This is so that information regarding the application and its distribution is limited to IAEST Solutions and the specific customer/application. These certificates are encoded with no easily identifiable name for the publisher or application and are generally valid for 1 year. Once expired, a replacement certificate must be installed.
These certificates may be installed automatically or manually. Information on how to install these certificates is available via the customer support link associated with the specific application's launch page.