3.4.2.2. Certificates and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

First Principle: Establishing trust and verifying identity ensures data confidentiality and integrity during transit.

Secure communication hinges on this. Digital Certificates and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are foundational to achieving this.

Digital Certificates are electronic documents that bind a public key to an identity, such as a website or an individual. Issued by trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs), they serve as digital passports, enabling parties to verify each other's authenticity. Their practical relevance is immediate: they enable HTTPS for secure web browsing, encrypt data in transit, and secure API endpoints.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the comprehensive framework that supports the creation, management, distribution, use, storage, and revocation of digital certificates. It provides the necessary policies, procedures, and systems to manage the lifecycle of public keys and their associated certificates, forming the backbone of secure online interactions.

In AWS, AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies the entire process. ACM allows you to easily provision, manage, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates for use with integrated AWS services like Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon API Gateway. This integration streamlines the deployment of secure applications, abstracting away the complexities of certificate management and renewal. Leveraging ACM ensures your AWS applications maintain robust, verified secure communication channels.

Key PKI Concepts & AWS Services:

• Digital Certificates: Bind public key to identity.
• PKI: Framework for managing certificate lifecycle.
• AWS Certificate Manager (ACM): Managed SSL/TLS certificate provisioning/deployment.

Scenario: A DevOps team is deploying a new web application and needs to ensure all communication between users and the application is encrypted using HTTPS. They also need to manage the SSL/TLS certificates with minimal operational overhead.

Reflection Question: How would you use AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to provision and manage the SSL/TLS certificate for this web application, integrating it with a load balancer (e.g., ALB) to enable HTTPS and ensure data confidentiality during transit?

💡 Tip: Consider the difference in trust models and use cases between publicly trusted Certificate Authorities (like those ACM uses) and private CAs you might manage for internal applications.