U.S. Department of State

D-Trade - Digital Certificate

A digital certificate is an electronic means of establishing your credentials when doing business or other transactions on the Web. It is issued by a certification authority (CA). The certificate contains your name, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder's public key (used for encrypting and decrypting messages and digital signatures), and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real.