Authors:
Kevin Foltz
and
William R. Simpson
Affiliation:
Institute for Defense Analyses, 4850 Mark Center Drive, Alexandria, VA 22311, U.S.A.
Keyword(s):
Enterprise, Public Key Infrastructure, System Design, Application Security, Security, Distinguished Name, X.509, Certificate, Zero Trust Architecture.
Abstract:
A public key infrastructure (PKI) provides a way to manage identities within an enterprise. Users are provided public/private key pairs, and trusted certification authorities issue credentials binding a user name to the associated public key for that user. This enables security functions by users within the enterprise, such as authentication, signature creation and validation, encryption, and decryption. However, the enterprise often interacts with partner enterprises and the open web, which may use different PKIs. Mobile devices do not easily operate with hardware-based PKI tokens such as smartcards. Standard digital signatures lack timing information such as validity or expiration. This paper examines some of the security challenges related to PKI deployment in the context of Enterprise Level Security (ELS), an enterprise solution for a high security environment.