A PKI certificate is nothing more than a digital certificate which was created following the public key infrastructure standards. These standards are used by organizations all around the world to make sharing of public certificates easier. When one company issues a public certificate to another company or individual, they do not want to also have to supply software to perform encryption and decryption processes. This would result in users having to install software from any business which issued their own public certificates, simply because they failed to follow the recognized standards.
A PKI Certificate Is Obtained Based on How You Want Them Issued
You decide how you want your users to obtain their own PKI certificate after they are created. You could have them request the certificate directly from your CA system. Once their request is received, it is reviewed and can be approved or denied by your system administrator. As long as the request is approved, the CA system will generate the certificate and send an email to the requestor. The email message will provide the requestor with instructions on how to obtain and install the certificate.