System certificates

A system certificate is a digital document that identifies the system or server that owns the certificate. System certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority and contain identifying information about the system or server, such as the system's distinguished name. The certificate also contains the system's public key. A server must have a digital certificate to use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for secure communications. Browsers that support digital certificates can examine a server's certificate to verify the identity of the server when the client accesses the server. The browser can then use the authentication of the certificate as the basis for initiating an SSL-encrypted session between the client and the server.