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PKI Deployment Issues to Consider

Deploying a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is essential for secure communications and data protection. This document outlines crucial issues for selecting between outsourcing a Certificate Authority (CA) and running an in-house CA, including private key protection, key escrow, certificate publishing, and revocation mechanisms. It reviews various commercial and open-source CA solutions, discusses best practices for key management, and emphasizes the importance of robust policies and procedures. Understanding these components ensures the effective implementation and operation of a secure PKI system.

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PKI Deployment Issues to Consider

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  1. PKI Deployment Issues to Consider Dartmouth College PKI Lab

  2. Key Issues • Outsource vs. run your own CA? • Private key protection for CA • Escrow of private encryption keys? • Publishing certificates • Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) • Policies and practices

  3. Outsource vs. run your own CA? • Commercial vendors • Verisign, DST, BeTrusted, GeoTrust, etc. • Commercial CA software operated in-house • RSA, Netscape, Sun (discontinued) • Open source CA software operated in-house • Homegrown using openSSL, OpenCA, Papyrus, PyCA, TinyCA, etc. • Success stories with each of these • Classic outsource versus in-house issues • A secure CA is expensive to operate • Tricky negotiating CA responsibilities and liabilities • Possible higher education bulk purchase from one or more vendors?

  4. Private key protection for CA • Compromised CA private key enables rogue certificates from unathorized CA. Need to reissue all compromised certificates from CA using a new private key! • Strategies: • Offline CA using sneakernet • “Nearline” CA using firewalls with pinholes, VPNs, etc. • CA hierarchies (lose subordinate key, only affect a portion of all certificates) • HSM to store private keys

  5. Escrow of private encryption keys • Lost private key => encrypted data is lost • Users may effectively destroy critical data • Escrow is saving the private key to avoid such loss • Don’t want to escrow signing and authentication keys (hampers non-repudiation – users may claim someone used the escrowed copy for that signature) • Secure storage of keys and recovery procedures can be expensive • Users may need multiple certificates for signing and encryption – some applications don’t handle this well

  6. Publishing certificates • For encryption, users need the recipient’s public certificate • How do they get it? • Received S/MIME email • Exchanged .cer or other format file • LDAP lookup (requires that the CA publish certificates to the directory)

  7. Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) • End user certificates may be revoked: • Compromised private key • Left institution • Misbehaved • Got newer certificate • Applications that care can check a list of revoked certificate serial numbers from the CA • Alternatives: • Online Certificate Status Protocol • Consult an authorization system after authentication

  8. Policies and practices • Rules for how a CA operates and how users are vetted when registering for certificates • Certificate Policy (CP): requirements for granting and managing PKI credentials • Certification Practices Statement (CPS): actual steps an institution takes to implement CP • Don’t get intimidated or bogged down making your CP/CPS perfect! Consider what you are replacing and get your feet wet… • http://middleware.internet2.edu/hepki-tag/pki-lite/pki-lite-policy-practices-current.html

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