Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations

Other Activities

There are a number of activities within various communities that are not formal standards activities but whose output will specify (or dictate) product implementation at some level of detail for a variety of vendors. Such specifications have the strength of a formal standards document within a particular community of interest. The importance of such activities should not be understated. Although there are numerous examples of formal standards that fell into oblivion because they were never widely adopted, the presence and energy of the activities discussed here indicates that PKI will not suffer the same fate. A growing number of communities, both large and small, are actively planning or building PKIs to satisfy their own requirements. ...