Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

Summary

The system of certificate authorities, digital certificates, and trust chains that makes asymmetric encryption practical at internet scale — the foundation behind HTTPS certificate validation.

How to Learn This

1Inspect a website's TLS certificate chain to see the trust hierarchy in action.
2Learn what a Certificate Authority (CA) does and why browsers trust a specific list of them.
3Understand what happens (and why it's dangerous) when a certificate is self-signed or expired.

Hashing & Password Security

Multi-Factor Authentication

More topics in Core Security Concepts

Authentication vs Authorization Encryption Basics (Symmetric vs Asymmetric)Hashing & Password Security Multi-Factor Authentication Access Control Models (RBAC, ABAC)Zero Trust Architecture Security Policies & Standards Defense in Depth The CVE & CVSS System

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