In cryptography

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

, a public key certificate (also known as a digital certificate or identity certificate) is an electronic document which uses a digital signature

Digital signature

A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the authenticity of a digital message or document. A valid digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, and that it was not altered in transit...

 to bind a public key with an identity — information such as the name of a person or an organization, their address, and so forth. The certificate can be used to verify that a public key belongs to an individual.

In a typical public key infrastructure

Public key infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure is a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective user identities by means of a certificate...

 (PKI) scheme, the signature will be of a certificate authority

Certificate authority

In cryptography, a certificate authority, or certification authority, is an entity that issues digital certificates. The digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate...

 (CA).