Question

How does the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) work?

Answer 1

At a macro level, this is how the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) works:

1. The request for the Digital Certificate is sent to the appropriate Certificate Authority (CA)
2. After this request has been processed, the Digital Certificate is issued to the person who is requesting it
3. The Digital Certificate then gets signed by confirming the actual identity of the person who is requesting it
4. The Digital Certificate can now be used to encrypt the plaintext into the ciphertext which is sent from the sending party to the receiving party.