Deciding Whether or not to use a Third Party Certificate Authority

Abstract

The decision to outsource security is difficult and touchy at best, due to cost constraints it may be the only viable solution for some companies wanting to utilize PKI and make use of digital certificates. The concept of the third party certificate authority has been around for quite some time. Starting with BBN Planet (now GTE Cybertrust) doing PKI services for the United States Federal Government since the late 1970s. Firms like VeriSign and Thawte have begun to offer server-side certificates for companies wanting to authenticate servers on the Internet. Finally, you get to firms such as Entrust or Baltimore, which allow a company to build its own private certificate authority (CA).