Digital certificates

From GridInfo

Introduction

Digital certificates are used within escience to provide authentication.

The traditional method of authentication is to use usernames and passwords, but this approach has a number of weaknesses within a grid computing environment.

The current favoured solution is to use X.509 digital certificates. A user of grid resources is provided with a certificate issued by a trusted authority: in the UK, the trusted authority for academics is the Grid Operations Support Centre. Your certificate contains the critical information that the authority can vouch for your authentication. Grid resources that trust your authority will then be able to accept your certificate when you attempt to access them.

What are digital certificates

At the heart of digital certificates is the technique of public key cryptography.