Digital Certificates

Digital Certificates are digital documents attesting to the binding of a public key to an individual or other entity. They allow verification of the claim that a specific public key does in fact belong to a specific individual. Certificates help prevent someone from using a phony key to impersonate someone else. In some cases it may be necessary to create a chain of certificates, each one certifying the previous one until the parties involved are confident of the identity in question.

In their simplest form, certificates contain a public key and a name. As commonly used, a certificate also contains an expiration date, the name of the certifying authority that issued the certificate, a serial number, and perhaps other information. For certificates issued by Vertifi, the routing number of the financial institution is included. The routing number, combined with the representative's name, provide a unique and positive identification.

IMPORTANT:

For Internet Explorer users, when installing a digital certificate, users have the ability to "enable strong private key protection" which enables the option for the digital certificate to be setup with Medium or High security.   Medium security means that the end user will be prompted with a web access confirmation pop-up message when accessing the secure pages of Ease-Link and VCP. This is the default setting for this option.   High security means that the end user can secure the certificate with a password. If the password option is selected, once the end user is prompted for and validates his/her digital certificate, he/she must then enter this password prior to gaining access to the secure pages of Ease-Link and VCP.   See Installing a Personal Certificate - Internet Explorer for more details on this option.   For Firefox Users, users have the ability to set a "Master Password" within the browser that will be required with every digital certificate installed on the PC. See Installing a Personal Certificate - Firefox for more details on this option.

Most importantly, the digital certificate contains the digital signature of the certificate issuer. The most widely accepted format for certificates is defined by the ITU-T X.509 international standard; thus, certificates can be read or written by any application complying with X.509.