Certificate basics

A certificate contains the public half of your public-private key pair along with other identifying information about your community and point of contact. You use the public key in your partner's certificate to encrypt a document for transmission over the Internet. Your partner uses the public key in your certificate to verify the digital signature of a document received from you.

The following is some basic information about how Interchange uses certificates:

• A community must have a certificate to exchange secure documents. Interchange can generate the certificate or it can be generated externally.
• Each partner also must have a certificate.
• A community or partner can have only one certificate designated as the default encryption or signing certificate.
• A community or partner can have multiple certificates.
• The key length for a community certificate does not have to be the same as for a partner’s certificate.

Related topics

• PKI description
• Why use encryption and digital signatures
• Interchange encryption method
• Encryption and signing summary
• Ensure data integrity and trust
• SSL authentication
• Distribute certificates to partners
• Self-signed or CA certificates
• When to get certificates
• Manage expiring certificates
• Trusted roots
• Auto import intermediate and root certificates
• FIPS compliance