What is a Security Certificate?
A security 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.
The Process Flow
Diagrams will give you more details about EASEE-gas Security
Certificates.
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
The rest of the procedures is available on the members area. If
you are a member, click here.
To obtain EASEE-gas digital certificates you have to be or
become a member
or an associated member of EASEE-gas.