Creating digital certificates follows a standardized format known as X509. This standard was created to help organizations maintain consistency between their certificates. A secondary purpose of the standardization was to enable organizations the ability to share certificates with other businesses and people in order to gain access to secure resources. For example, a bank will share digital certificates with their customers in order to create a secure connection for online banking.
X509 Standards are incorporated into a Certificate Authority System
The layout of a digital certificate requires that information be added to the certificate in a specific manner. This layout is part of the X509 standards which allows data to be automatically organized when a certificate is created using a certificate authority (CA) system. The current standards are incorporated into the CA system so users do not have to worry about the placement of data whenever they are issuing new certificates.