You Can Create a Variety of Digital Certificates with a Certificate Authority

The types of digital certificates created by a certificate authority will depend on how they will be used. You could use a CA system to create digital certificates containing digital signatures. You will need to create individual certificates for each user needing to use a secure electronic signature to sign different types of electronic documents and forms. Users, who do not have a digital certificate with their digital signature, will not be able to securely sign and encrypt documents.

A Certificate Authority Creates Digital Certificates for Use with SSL Systems

Another type of digital certificate created by a CA system is for gaining access to secure information when it is access over the internet. You may recognize this type of secure access as being call SSL. SSL with take the digital certificate contained on your computer, and compare it to the matching digital certificate container on the SSL server. As long as the two digital certificates are authenticated against one another correctly, you are granted access and a secure connection is made.