A typical PKI includes the following key elements:
- A trusted party, called a certificate authority (CA), acts as the root of trust and provides services that authenticate the identity of individuals, computers and other entities
- A registration authority, often called a subordinate CA, certified by a root CA to issue certificates for specific uses permitted by the root
- A certificate database, which stores certificate requests and issues and revokes certificates
- A certificate store, which resides on a local computer as a place to store issued certificates and private keys