What is a Security Certificate?

A digital certificate is a digital credential that validates the identity of the certificate's owner, much as a passport does. A trusted party, called a Certificate Authority (CA) issues digital certificates to companies and individuals. A security certificate has a chosen expiry date and is signed by a certificate which has a higher trust. Because trust is the keyword for certificates the administrative procedure ensures an adequate level of trust.

Every digital certificate has a pair of associated cryptographic keys. This pair of keys consists of a private key and a public key. The public key is part of the certificate itself, while the certificate owner stores the private key in a secure file. The owner of a certificate can use these keys to take advantage of the security features that the keys provide through cryptography. In our case the certificate owner uses these keys to sign and encrypt messages sent between AS2 servers, thus ensuring the reliability of a message's origin and protect the integrity and privacy of the message.

What is the added value of obtaining an EASEE-gas Security Certificate?

It is clear that digital certificates are a crucial part of electronic B2B (Business to Business) communication. If every party would use its own certificates every organisation would end up in an unmanageable situation where each party has to deal with certificates from different origins, expiry dates and different levels of trust. To avoid this EASEE-gas provides a single source for trusted digital certificates for electronic communication in the gas business. It is evident that using one brand of certificates reduces costs in the operational environment.

How to obtain a Security Certificate

To obtain EASEE-gas digital certificates you have to be a member or an associated member of EASEE-gas.