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 All information current as of 19:09:31 Pacific Time, Monday, 21 February 2005.

Understanding PKI: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations, Second Edition

   by Carlisle Adams / Steve Lloyd

  Hardcover:
    Addison-Wesley Pub Co
    06 November, 2002

   US$32.99 

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Editorial description(s):

From Book News, Inc.
In this update of the 2000 edition, two veteran contributors to Public-Key Infrastructures (PKI) design and security policy for computer networks more specifically address issues of this technology's operation in the business environment and its future. After introducing core PKI concepts such as public-key cryptology and authentication services, the authors discuss standards and interoperability initiatives, and deployment models and considerations. Includes suggestions for further reading for those wishing to understand the operational and technical (but not too technical) aspects of PKI technology.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Book Info
Covers a broad range of material related to PKIs, including certification, operational considerations and standardization efforts, as well as deployment issues and considerations.


From the Publisher
Without doubt, the promise of public-key infrastructure (PKI) technology has attracted a significant amount of attention in the last few years. Hardly a week goes by without some facet of PKI being addressed in a newspaper, trade journal, or conference paper. We hear and read about the promise of authentication and non-repudiation services provided through the use of digital signature techniques and about confidentiality and key management services based on a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography--all facilitated through the realization of a supporting technology referred to as PKI. In fact, many people consider the widespread deployment of PKI technology to be an important enabler of secure global electronic commerce.

Although the foundation for PKI was established over two decades ago with the invention of public-key cryptography, PKI technology has been offered as a commercially viable solution only within the last few years. But what started as a handful of technology vendors a few years ago has seen the birth of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of products that offer one form or another of PKI-related service. Further, the commercial demand for PKI-based services remains strong, and available evidence suggests that this will continue for the foreseeable future.

Still, as a technology, PKI is fairly new. And to many, PKI technology is shrouded in mystery to some extent. This situation appears to be exacerbated by the proliferation of conflicting documentation, standards, and vendor approaches. Furthermore, there are few comprehensive books devoted to PKI that provide a good introduction to its critical concepts and technology fundamentals.

Thus, the authors share a common motivation in writing this book: to provide a vendor-neutral source of information that can be used to establish a baseline for understanding PKI. In this book, we provide answers to many of the fundamental PKI-related questions, including

What exactly is a PKI?
What constitutes a digital signature?
What is a certificate?
What is certificate revocation?
What is a Certification Authority (CA)?
What are the governing standards?
What are the issues associated with large-scale PKI deployment within an enterprise?
These are just some of the questions we explore in this book.

Motivations for PKI
It is important to recognize that PKI is not simply a "neat" technology without tangible benefits.When deployed judiciously, PKI offers certain fundamental advantages to an organization, including the potential for substantial cost savings. PKI can be used as the underlying technology to support authentication, integrity, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. This is accomplished through a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques enabled through the use of a single, easily managed infrastructure rather than multiple security solutions. (See Chapter 2, Public-Key Cryptography; Chapter 3, The Concept of an Infrastructure; Chapter 4, Core PKI Services: Authentication, Integrity, and Confidentiality; and Chapter 5, PKI-Enabled Services.) PKI offers scalable key management in that the overhead associated with the distribution of keying material to communicating parties is reduced significantly when compared with solutions based solely on symmetric cryptography. (See Chapter 2 for a description of symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques.) Ultimately, however, the primary motivations from a business standpoint are not technical but economic: How can PKI give a positive return on investment? To that end, judicious deployment of a single, unifying PKI technology can help, among other things

Reduce administrative overhead (when compared with the deployment of multiple point solutions)
Reduce the number of passwords required by end users (and, consequently, the administrative and help desk costs associated with managing them)
Reduce paperwork and improve workflow efficiencies through more automated (and more secure) business processes
Optimize work-force productivity (by ensuring that users spend less time contending with the security infrastructure and more time on the job at hand)
Reduce requirements for end-user training related to the use of the security services (because there is one security solution rather than many)
Not only does PKI technology have the potential to realize cost savings, but in some cases it also might even be a source of revenue for an organization (through support for new services that might otherwise not be offered). Benefits and related business considerations associated with PKI technology are discussed further in Part III, Deployment Considerations.

Changes in the Second Edition
The world, and PKI's place in the world, has evolved somewhat since the first edition of this book was written. Like many technologies, PKI has experienced the highs and lows of media attention and analyst focus: In three short years, the descriptions have covered the spectrum from "silver bullet" to "snake oil." There is still confusion regarding naming of entities and the use of PKI in real-world business applications such as e-mail. Occasionally, the long-term viability of PKI is questioned in journals or trade publications. In this second edition, two new chapters have been added to address precisely these areas:

Chapter 14, PKI in Practice, looks at the use of this technology in the real world and tries to clarify where PKI can be beneficial and where it cannot.

Chapter 15, The Future of PKI, is based upon an observation of how the world has been evolving and attempts to answer the question: Will this technology survive and, if so, why?

For the most part, however, the roller coaster of public opinion has now largely stabilized. There is general consensus that PKI is one viable option for a good, solid authentication technology with a number of appealing benefits compared with other technologies. In conjunction with this, PKI itself has matured and evolved to better meet the needs of the environments that might deploy it and rely on it for various services. In this edition, changes and additions have been made throughout the book to capture and explain this evolution. Some specific examples include the following:

Chapter 5, PKI-Enabled Services, now includes a section on privacy as a service that may be enabled by a PKI.

Chapters 6, Certificates and Certification, and 8, Certificate Revocation, have been updated to reflect new extensions and clarification text that were introduced in the X.509 (2000) standard.

Chapter 9, Trust Models, now incorporates material on several additional trust models that may be appropriate in some environments.

Chapter 13, Electronic Signature Legislation and Considerations, has been revised and updated to reflect the significant progress that has been made in that area since late 1999. * The whole of Part II, Standards, has been updated to incorporate the latest achievements in that area, as well as the new initiatives that have been started, especially in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) standards bodies. Numerous other, more minor, updates and revisions may be found throughout the book.

Audience
The main purpose of this book is to provide a fairly comprehensive overview that will help the reader better understand the technical and operational considerations behind PKI technology. You will benefit from this book if you are responsible for the planning, deployment, and/or operation of an enterprise PKI. Those who are simply interested in the basic principles behind a PKI should also find this book useful.

We hope that this book will become an educational tool for many and a handy reference guide for others. This book is not intended to resolve extremely detailed implementation questions, although it can serve as a primer for someone who will eventually be more interested in the finer implementation details.


From the Back Cover


Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the foundation of the four major elements of digital security: authentication, integrity, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. The idea of a public-key infrastructure has existed for more than a decade, but the need for PKI has intensified over the last few years as the Internet has expanded its reach into business, government, the legal system, the military, and other areas that depend on secure communications.



Understanding PKI, Second Edition, is both a guide for software engineers involved in PKI development and a readable resource for technical managers responsible for their organization’s security policies and investments. It is a comprehensive primer to the latest in PKI technology and how it is used today. Taking a non-vendor-specific approach, this book explains fundamental concepts, examines emerging standards, and discusses deployment considerations and strategies that effect success.



This second edition has been updated throughout to incorporate all of the most recent developments in the PKI field. Two new chapters have been added to address the use of PKI in the real world and to explore the technology’s future. This new edition also addresses:

These are just some of the questions we explore in this book.

Motivations for PKI



It is important to recognize that PKI is not simply a "neat" technology without tangible benefits.When deployed judiciously, PKI offers certain fundamental advantages to an organization, including the potential for substantial cost savings. PKI can be used as the underlying technology to support authentication, integrity, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. This is accomplished through a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques enabled through the use of a single, easily managed infrastructure rather than multiple security solutions. (See Chapter 2, Public-Key Cryptography; Chapter 3, The Concept of an Infrastructure; Chapter 4, Core PKI Services: Authentication, Integrity, and Confidentiality; and Chapter 5, PKI-Enabled Services.) PKI offers scalable key management in that the overhead associated with the distribution of keying material to communicating parties is reduced significantly when compared with solutions based solely on symmetric cryptography. (See Chapter 2 for a description of symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques.) Ultimately, however, the primary motivations from a business standpoint are not technical but economic: How can PKI give a positive return on investment? To that end, judicious deployment of a single, unifying PKI technology can help, among other things



Not only does PKI technology have the potential to realize cost savings, but in some cases it also might even be a source of revenue for an organization (through support for new services that might otherwise not be offered). Benefits and related business considerations associated with PKI technology are discussed further in Part III, Deployment Considerations.

Changes in the Second Edition



The world, and PKI's place in the world, has evolved somewhat since the first edition of this book was written. Like many technologies, PKI has experienced the highs and lows of media attention and analyst focus: In three short years, the descriptions have covered the spectrum from "silver bullet" to "snake oil." There is still confusion regarding naming of entities and the use of PKI in real-world business applications such as e-mail. Occasionally, the long-term viability of PKI is questioned in journals or trade publications. In this second edition, two new chapters have been added to address precisely these areas:



For the most part, however, the roller coaster of public opinion has now largely stabilized. There is general consensus that PKI is one viable option for a good, solid authentication technology with a number of appealing benefits compared with other technologies. In conjunction with this, PKI itself has matured and evolved to better meet the needs of the environments that might deploy it and rely on it for various services. In this edition, changes and additions have been made throughout the book to capture and explain this evolution. Some specific examples include the following:

Audience



The main purpose of this book is to provide a fairly comprehensive overview that will help the reader better understand the technical and operational considerations behind PKI technology. You will benefit from this book if you are responsible for the planning, deployment, and/or operation of an enterprise PKI. Those who are simply interested in the basic principles behind a PKI should also find this book useful.



We hope that this book will become an educational tool for many and a handy reference guide for others. This book is not intended to resolve extremely de tailed implementation questions, although it can serve as a primer for someone who will eventually be more interested in the finer implementation details.

Organization



The book is organized into three parts. Part I provides essential background information necessary to better understand the concepts and principles behind PKI. Part II addresses standards and related activities (for example, industry-sponsored interoperability initiatives) related to PKI. There are two primary purposes for including this section in the book:

  1. It provides an overview of the major standards bodies involved in the PKI arena and discusses the main focus of each group, giving a road map to some of these activities.
  2. It demonstrates the relative maturity and stability of this area, highlighting the fact that a solid basis for implementation and interoperability has already been laid.


Part III discusses PKI deployment considerations, providing guidance for some of the initial and fundamental decisions that must be made prior to any PKI deployment.

Part I: Concepts



Part I of this book deals with fundamental PKI concepts. This includes background information (for example, a primer on cryptography is included), as well as detailed information with respect to public-key certificates and certificate revocation schemes.



Chapter 1, Introduction, introduces Part I and provides a list of the contents of Part I on a chapter-by-chapter basis.



Chapter 2, Public-Key Cryptography, provides a brief, nonmathematical introduction to the concepts of public-key cryptography relevant to the material presented throughout the remainder of the book. It includes the distinction between symmetric and public-key ciphers, the concept of a key pair, the services of this technology, terminology, and sample algorithms.



Chapter 3, The Concept of an Infrastructure, discusses an infrastructure, highlighting its usefulness as an application enabler, its role in secure single sign-on, and its capability to provide end-user transparency and comprehensive security. This chapter also provides a working definition of PKI.



Chapter 4, Core PKI Services: Authentication, Integrity, and Confidentiality, and Chapter 5, PKI-Enabled Services, examine services that a PKI can provide. Chapter 4 discusses the core services of authentication, integrity, and confidentiality; Chapter 5 looks at PKI-enabled services such as digital time stamping, notarization, non-repudiation, and privilege management.



Chapter 6, Certificates and Certification, introduces the concept of a certificate and discusses the process of certification. Certificate contents and format are described, along with the role of a Certification Authority (CA) and a Registration Authority (RA).



Chapter 7, Key and Certificate Management, looks at the whole area of key/certificate lifecycle management, including generation, publication, update, termination, key history, key backup, and key recovery.



Chapter 8, Certificate Revocation, discusses common techniques for certificate revocation, including both periodic publication mechanisms and on-line query mechanisms.



Chapter 9, Trust Models, examines the concept of trust models. Strict hierarchies, loose hierarchies, policy-based hierarchies, distributed architectures, the four-corner model, the Web model, user-centric trust, and cross-certification are presented and compared. We also discuss certificate path processing in this chapter.



Chapter 10, Multiple Certificates per Entity, includes an examination of key pair uses, support for non-repudiation, and independent certificate management.



Chapter 11, PKI Information Dissemination: Repositories and Other Techniques, looks at the area of certificate dissemination and repositories. Options for sharing public-key-related information between two or more cooperating PKI domains are discussed.



Chapter 12, PKI Operational Considerations, discusses client-side software, on-line requirements, physical security, and disaste r planning/recovery, along with tradeoffs between system security and ease of use.



Chapter 13, Electronic Signature Legislation and Considerations, discusses some of the recent legislation and directives that pertain to electronic signatures and clarifies some of the terminology associated with various forms of electronic signatures, including digital signatures. Some of the requirements and obligations that may apply to Certification Authorities (CAs), subscribers, and relying parties are briefly discussed.



Chapter 14, PKI in Practice, focuses on the use of PKI in the real world and tries to clarify some common misunderstandings and sources of confusion about what PKI can do and what it can't do (and was never intended to do).



Chapter 15, The Future of PKI, considers this oft-posed question: Why has PKI not "taken off" yet? This chapter offers an opinion about why PKI adoption has been slower than many people expected and discusses—with a view to emerging trends in the industry—the future of PKI.



Chapter 16, Conclusions and Further Reading, concludes Part I and suggests some sources to consult for further reading in this area.

Part II: Standards



Part II of this book addresses standards activities and interoperability initiatives.



Chapter 17, Introduction, introduces Part II and provides a list of the contents of Part II on a chapter-by-chapter basis.



Chapter 18, Major Standards Activities, discusses some of the most prominent activities taking place within formal standards bodies, as well as related efforts being undertaken outside the standards bodies.



Chapter 19, Standardization Status and Road Map, provides the current and projected nearterm standardization status of some of the most significant specifications.



Chapter 20, Standards: Necessary but Not Sufficient, considers the fact that the existence of a "standard," whether it is the product of a formal standards body or not, is necessary but not sufficient to guarantee that the products of different vendors will interoperate with one another. Some of the reasons for this are given, along with a discussion of the usefulness of profiling activities and interoperability pilots.



Finally, Chapter 21, Conclusions and Further Reading, provides concluding remarks and some suggestions for further reading.

Part III: Deployment Considerations



Part III of this book addresses deployment. Not intended to be a deployment handbook, this part of the book primarily identifies many of the deployment questions that should be asked (and answered) when considering any large-scale enterprise PKI deployment.



Chapter 22, Introduction, introduces Part III and provides a list of the contents of Part III on a chapter-by-chapter basis.



Chapter 23, Benefits and Costs of a PKI, discusses the benefits realized through the deployment of a PKI. It also discusses cost considerations. This chapter helps identify sound business reasons for deploying a PKI in the enterprise environment.



Chapter 24, Deployment Issues and Decisions, discusses a number of issues that should be resolved before initial deployment occurs. Essentially, this chapter provides a basic foundation for product selection.



Chapter 25, Barriers to Deployment, addresses some of the more common hurdles to deployment,issues that one must consider in terms of long-term strategy.



Chapter 26, Typical Business Models, explains some of the more common business models one may want to implement. It also provides a brief discussion of some initiatives that can be used as a basis to establish interdomain trust.



Chapter 27, Conclusions and Further Reading, concludes Part III and offers suggestions for further reading.

Vendor-Neutral Policy



We would like to emphasize that we have made every attempt to ensure that this book is as vendor neutral as possible. In fact, some of the original text has been modified at the request of one or more reviewers when (unintentionally) it even remotely appeared that we we re advocating one approach over another. As authors, we are describing in this book our "vision" of what constitutes a comprehensive PKI. Although this viewpoint occasionally aligns more closely with some environments and certain specific vendor products than others, we hasten to point out that we are not aware of any one vendor that offers all the services that are described within this book.



We also recognize that some environments are necessarily more closely aligned with a subset of the components and services described herein (because of their specific requirements and target users), and we fully understand that these environments may never need to fully align with what we refer to as a comprehensive PKI. This is as it should be. This book is not about the "Internet PKI," nor is it meant to be limited to the "enterprise PKI"—although, arguably, the enterprise environment is closer today to our notion of the comprehensive PKI than many alternative deployment environments. This book attempts to describe all aspects of a PKI; specific environments will implement subsets as needed. We have provided a discussion of some of today's PKI variations at the end of Chapter 5 in order to clarify these concepts.



0672323915P10162002


Book Description
This book is a tutorial on, and a guide to the deployment of, Public-Key Infrastructures. It covers a broad range of material related to PKIs, including certification, operational considerations and standardization efforts, as well as deployment issues and considerations. Emphasis is placed on explaining the interrelated fields within the topic area, to assist those who will be responsible for making deployment decisions and architecting a PKI within an organization. --This text refers to the edition.




Reader review(s):

Great PKI Project Manager's Guide/tutorial/overview, January 26, 2000
I gave this five stars for the breadth of coverage. I don't need yet another book on cryptography -- I already have a shelf full. Carlisle and Steve cover the PKI turf without getting unnecessarily bogged down in technical details. For example, they cover the functions and differences of ECDSA versus ECDH in about a paragraph. If you want to know how the algorithms work, read Applied Cryptography. This has a clear, concise, and non-technical explanation of just about every concept, standard, and issue a project manager would need to know about PKI. I give credit for not trying to cover the technical issues in depth -- rather, this takes the approach of: here's the issue, here are the alternatives, and if you want to know more read ...The concepts and issues are very current, and cover proposed and draft standards, including Privilege Management Infrastructure, certificate revocation mechanisms, trust models, etc. Excellent coverage!

Excellent PKI reference, October 30, 2000
Pundits, the press, and other elements of the cognoscenti invariably attempt to make every year "the year of" something. For whatever else 2000 might be the year of, many technology periodicals have proclaimed it the year of public key infrastructure, or PKI. Didn't know that? Many people don't even understand the term, which is neither descriptive nor intuitive.

In the physical world, trust is built through a complex web of social, legal, national, international, and business transactions that can take years or decades to develop. Items such as driver's licenses or passports create trust, because they are underwritten by the issuing authority. Unfortunately, the same level of trust is much harder to implement in the electronic world. One way to do so is via PKI.

As an example, one can use a passport for identification in the physical world. The cyberspace equivalent could be a digital certificate for authentication. Similarly, ink-based signatures are used on binding contracts. In the digital world, digital signatures are used to ensure a concept called nonrepudiation, by which the party involved in a process cannot later deny that he or she took part in it.

Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure is a guide to the effective deployment of PKI. The authors do a great job of covering the critical areas of PKI, including certification, operational considerations, standardization efforts, and deployment issues.

The authors deserve credit for producing a guide that avoids getting bogged down in minutiae and other technical details. Their approach is to cover a topic at a broad level, delve into some detail, then refer the reader to an appropriate source for particulars. They are also obsessively vendor-neutral.

This is an important book for those who expect to do e-commerce. Because whether anyone realizes it or not, this is the year of the PKI.

This review of mine originally appears at http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/000859.html

comprehensive and still very readable: a must!, June 4, 2000
I'm giving courses on PKI. I was looking for a good reference for my students. Finally found one! I read it cover to cover: comprehensive, very easy to read, vendor-neutral (very important to me), not biaised: also gives you the pros and cons, issues with PKI. A must to read if interested in PKI.

Nearly worthless, March 23, 2003
I bought this book because of the excellent reviews it got. However upon reading this I can't see any justification for these reviews. First of all it is very high level; I mean appropriate for your manager's, manager's manager maybe. This book is all about fawning over Diffie Hellman and philosophizing about how pki should be used etc. There is no technical information in this book, no code, no flow charts, no diagrams, no data structures. It doesn't even explain how pki is applied, for example to ssl. All the real information in this book could have been condenced to a few pages. I really needed this book to be good and it was not. Look if you want to go to a cocktail party and impress someone with no technical exposure then maybe this is your book. Otherwise there must be better choices.

Complete and succinct discussion of PKI, April 25, 2000
"Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure" is well written and is a terrific book. It is the most complete and succinct book available on the subject of PKI. Other books deal with various detailed aspects of Public-Key Infrastructure, but this particular book is the best available in forming a clear overall perspective of the subject area. A great book for managers or technical readers which are looking for good, solid information but which don't want excessive details. I enjoyed the book, and feel the authors did an excellent job in describing the subject of PKI. The approach taken in this book is useful, not hyped. The coverage is broad and extensive but not encumbered by inordinate detail about algorithms and protocols. Explanations are clear and concise.

I am pleased to recommend the book to anyone looking for a very good, succinct but thorough treatment of the subject area.

Wonderful overview, November 21, 2000
This is an excellent summary and overview of a difficult topic. It simplifies and explains without removing important detail or obscuring unsolved problems. It's an excellent book for technical people new to PKI, or for manager/business types who need a deeper understanding of the technology. I bought extra copies to hand out at work to people who needed to know this stuff.

Great Overview of PKI from Entrust's Top Cryptographer, May 30, 2000
This book gives a great overview of PKI for the corporate descision maker who is trying to deside if PKI is a required solution. More theory than technical, this book is a good primer for the technology.

Although the authors work for Entust and they claim there is no prejudice in the book, they still recommend 'best practices' that just so happen to be only available via Entrust.

Despite the bend toward Entrust solutions, this is still a great buy.

PKI book that makes sense, May 21, 2001
Carlisle and his co authors have written a book that will allow the Security practioner, as well as the Security techie, to understand the basics of PKI Infrastrucutres. I had the opportunity to meet Carlisle at the Secure Summit this past Jan., and we had a very interesting dicussion about this book, how he came to write it, etc. Just sorry I didn't have my copy for an autograph. I have ordered my 2d copy, sent the first copy I bought to a buddy who needed to understand the innnards of PKI. This book is an easy read but loaded with good data on PKI. I would recommend this book to managers who need to understand PKI but don't need to do the technical pieces. For my part, I am Security professional with over 30 years experience.

Has value for Technical Architects / Security Analysts, May 7, 2004
I think there's some merit to people expecting a more hands on approach in a book like this. But those expectations seems unrealistic. The book is not titled "Implementing PKI," it's called "Understanding PKI."

There is value in a concepts book. For experienced technical professional trying to get a grip on the terminologies and concepts of security and PKI, this book is succinct and touches all the major points.

For those looking for screenshots of people right clicking icons, there's a thousand other books like that! Most of those so called "technical books" are not that technical. It's nice to have a book that's not product specific for a change.

This book does what it intends to do well. There is a need for more technical books but this book is valuable in it's present form. I have given several copies to peers.

I hope this review helps you balance out your opinions before deciding for or against this book.

Brian Wilson must work for Verisign..., February 25, 2001
Its not Entrust's fault if they are the only PKI vendor that actively supports standards, develops the most technologically advanced and secure PKI solutions, and carry out the best practices.
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