PKI and Federated Identity Management introductory documents

One of Carillon's strengths is its experts' skill at communicating technical concepts in a clear, concise way to both technical and non-technical audiences. These aptitudes are put to use in this section, where you will find various documents introducing the reader to concepts found in Public Key Infrastructure and Identity Federation solutions.

Readers interested in more in-depth information will want to look at our HOWTOs, whitepapers and articles section.

These two pages present a basic explanation of what a Public Key Infrastructure and Federated Identity Management are.

• What is a Public Key Infrastructure?
• What is Federated Identity Management?

Carillon has prepared these lighthearted tutorials describing various PKI-related concepts. Since Identity Management offers few occasions for comic relief, we traded serious for simple, and let the fingerpuppets do the talking.

Enrolment, sometimes also called the Registration Authority process, is the first step to participating in a PKI.

• Basic PKI enrolment process
• Low assurance PKI enrolment over the web
• Higher assurance PKI enrolment with a smartcard
• PKI enrolment for devices

And here are some of the day-to-day concepts found in a PKI:

• Encryption vs. Signature
• Path Validation, or the Chain of Trust
• Non-Repudiation
• Gauging Assurance
• Certificate Revocation
• Certificate Management Lifecycle
• Secure Web Applications