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public key infrastructure

An enterprise-wide service (i.e. data integrity, user identification and authentication, user non-repudiation, data confidentiality, encryption, and digital signature) that supports digital signatures and other public key-based security mechanisms for Department of Defense functional enterprise programs, including generation, production, distribution, control, and accounting of public key certificates. A public key infrastructure provides the means to bind public keys to their owners and helps in the distribution of reliable public keys in large heterogeneous networks. Public keys are bound to their owners by public key certificates. These certificates contain information such as the owner's name and the associated public key and are issued by a reliable certification authority. Also called PKI.