Just about every digital certificate in use today follows the X509 certificate standards. These standards were created in order to simplify certificate creation and allow for certificate sharing between organizations and other individuals. Without these standards, companies would all have their own certificate versions in use. As a result, users would have to obtain a new certificate, every time they needed, to conduct business transactions with organizations outside of their own company. Further, certificate sharing would be completely eliminated. This would result in organizations having to create a larger volume of certificates and users ending up with one certificate for every process, procedure and application.
X509 Certificate Standards Allow Organizations to Use Digital Certificates Easier
Organizations are able to use digital certificates more easily, thanks to X509 certificate standards. The standards outline the specific location of data contained within the certificate, ranging from the version number and expiration date, to adding digital and qualified signatures. Using these standards allow similar applications to share a single certificate and eliminate having to create and generate an individual certificate for each one. Organizations are also able to share certificates outside of their company that contain public keys, in order to conduct business in a secure and safe manner. Further, multiple purpose certificates are able to be generated and created with your certificate authority system. For instance, you may decide to create a certificate which is used to authenticate users against your network and online resources, but the certificate might also contain a digital or qualified signature.