Secure Electronic Commerce: Building the Infrastructure for Digital Signatures and Encryption (2nd Edition)

If you've been charged with setting up a public key infrastructure (PKI) for an organization, or if you're just not content to trust commercial products' claims of security, have a look at Secure Electronic Commerce: Building the Infrastructure for Digital Signatures and Encryption for a clear and complete overview of digital certificate management techniques. This richly detailed and heavily referenced volume generally stays clear of implementation specifics. Readers can count on it to provide the background in concepts and terminology that they'll need to make PKI design decisions.

Without exception, this is a very clearly written book, but there are rather few conceptual diagrams--and a few more graphics might have clarified the relationships among entities. Regardless, it's abundantly evident that the authors did a great deal of research--a rarity in this field. Nearly every other sentence contains a reference to an endnote. To truly understand how PKI works, study this book and the material it references, and participate in online forums on PKI issues. --David Wall

Topics covered: Public key infrastructure (PKI) design and functionality, including the legal principles behind binding electronic transactions and the details of authentication, encryption, non-repudiation, and key management. Certificates, Certificate Authorities (CAs), and means of managing trust relationships are all covered.