Folks interested in a public source of information about the concept, nature, and policies of an X.509 authentication domain (PKI) might wish to see and understand the civilian activities of the US Federal Govt: http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/pki/
Public Key Infrastructure
Pardon our mess.
This page is under construction. Additional files, and additional formats, will be added in the near future. Your patience is appreciated!
The following documents are products of the Federal PKI Steering Committee's Technical Working Group. Together, they comprise Version 1 of the Technical Specifications for the Federal PKI.
- Requirements for the Federal Public Infrastructure (PostScript) [265366 bytes]
- This is Part A: of the Technical Specifications, the Draft Requirements for the Federal PKI.
- Technical Security Policy for the Federal PKI (PostScript) [163543 bytes]
- This is Part B: of the Technical Specifications, the Draft Technical Security Policy for the Federal PKI.
- Proposed Federal PKI Concept of Operations (PostScript) [980672 bytes]
- This is the Part C: of Technical Specifications, the Concept of Operations for the Federal PKI.
- Interoperability Profile (PostScript) [746328 bytes]
- This is Part D: of the Technical Specifications, Draft Interoperability Profiles for the Federal PKI.
Contractor Reports: the following reports were developed by contractors for NIST. These reports do not constitute government positions, but rather detail the advice and guidance provided to the government regarding public key infrastructure.
- The 1994 Mitre PKI Study Final Report. [1461396 bytes]
- This report describes a federal PKI based on a strict hierarchical architecture, using X.509 version 2 certificates.
- A Public Key Infrastructure for Unclassified but Sensitive Applications. [946734 bytes]
- This 1995 report describes a federal PKI based on a network architecture using the X.509 version 3 certificate.