CA
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In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. In this model of trust relationships, a CA is a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The most commonly encountered public-key infrastructure (PKI) schemes are those used to implement https on the world-wide web. All these are based upon the X.509 standard and feature CAs.