The overall infrastructure, including certificate issuance, for operating public-key cryptography securely.
Short for Public Key Infrastructure, referring to the overall infrastructure -- certificate issuance, revocation, verification, and so on -- for operating public-key cryptography. It's structured hierarchically, with intermediate certificate authorities sitting below the root, so that if a key is ever compromised, the damage can be contained by revoking just the intermediate certificate rather than the root.
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