What is the COMODO RSA Certification Authority?
The COMODO RSA certification authority is the most trusted and respected authority for signing SSL certificates. Are you also fed up reading about this everywhere but having no clue what the COMODO RSA certification authority is or why it’s’ the most respected one? You’re at the right place, then. This article will help you answer your “what” and “why.”
First, let’s understand what a Comodo RSA Certification Authority is?
Certificate authorities provide businesses with network, Internet, and authentication solutions for business and smooth communication. These authorities are a key link in the internet security chain.
The main purpose of these authorities is to act as trusted third parties and securely sign certificates for network entities they have authenticated using secure means. The sign stands as proof for other network entities to verify that the certificate authority has authenticated the bearer of a certificate.
One such authority is the COMODO certificate authority (CA). However, to consider COMODO as just another authority will be an injustice to the brand.
The COMODO RSA certification authority, also known as Comodo RSA domain validation secure server CA, is a leading certificate authority in the global market. With its identity and trust assurance services, it has a customer base of more than 700,000 customers worldwide and 100 million secured websites. Check out all the various SSL certificates from COMODO.
With the continuous evolution of the Internet, COMODO has evolved from a vendor of antivirus software to one of the most prominent players in the cybersecurity industry. COMODO SSL certificates provide a trustworthy and secure environment by providing the below-mentioned points.
- Authentication: COMODO can authenticate individuals, businesses, and content to ensure integrity and proof of identity.
- Information Security: Using its universally trusted PKI to encrypt data at all stages of its life cycle
- Website Security: If COMODO handles your website’s security, you can happily rest assured.
What about the COMODO RSA Certification Authority?
The COMODO RSA Certificate Authority is the root. From here, we sign and subsequently chain all other SSL certificates. We understand that the COMODO RSA Certificate Authority isn’t easy to understand, primarily when its definition is based on the jargon listed below and questions about it.
- What is root? How does it work?
- What’s the role of the certificate chain?
- What do intermediate certificates do?
Don’t worry. We’ve got you all covered. Read further to thoroughly understand the root certificate chain and intermediate certificate in the COMODO RSA Certificate Authority context.
Understanding Root
To understand it in layman’s terms, a root certificate is the issuing SSL certificate. It comes pre-installed in your browser’s trust store. The COMODO RSA certification authority is one of those trusted roots.
Your browser must climb the trust chain to ensure that it is linked to a trusted root. If this process is successful, your SSL certificate becomes trusted and is directly chained to the root.
However, it isn’t as simple as it looks. It establishes links through a series of certificates to ensure the issuing root remains uncompromised.
Understanding the Certificate Chain
Suppose you’ve understood the root certificate correctly. In that case, you’ve also understood how an SSL certificate links through a series of intermediate chains to authenticate an entity and not directly to the root certificate. If the SSL certificate doesn’t link back to a root, the browser will not accept its authentication.
Thus, we refer to the chain formed for an SSL certificate to establish a link back to the root as the certificate chain. More simply, a certificate chain is the list of certificates starting from a server’s certificate and terminating with the root certificate.
Understanding the Intermediate Certificate
As the name suggests, we issue the intermediate certificate as an intermediary between the certificate authority and the end user’s certificate. A verification mechanism informs a browser that a certificate was issued under secure and valid conditions.
An SSL certificate can link directly to the root certificate to understand it. Thus, a trusted root certificate authority (in this case, the COMODO RSA Certificate Authority) issues an intermediate certificate as a subordinate certificate and provides it to a certificate provider, granting them the authority to issue an SSL server certificate.
Now that you’ve got a pretty good grasp of what COMODO is and what the COMODO RSA certification authority does, let’s also understand its importance.
Importance of COMODO RSA Certification Authority (Comodo RSA Organization Validation Secure Server CA)
1. Help secure the internet for both organizations and users
Through its thorough process of issuing certificates, it ensures that the organization and its users are secured on the internet.
2. Provides authenticity to an individual or business
Once a business or an individual is certified with the COMODO RSA Certification Authority, it automatically gives authenticity to that business or individual. You’ve probably seen errors like “comodo rsa certification authority not trusted” while surfing the web. That is your warning sign that the individual or business has not been verified and thus their authenticity cannot be trusted.
3. Builds trust amongst users
A COMODO RSA certification automatically puts you in a position of trust amongst your users. It depicts that your identity can be trusted and is authentic.
While we tried to provide you with the most relevant and essential key pointers for understanding what COMODO RSA Certification Authority is and what it does, it’s also inevitable that you will learn a lot about it on the fly when directly working with it. COMODO RSA is a huge organization, and there’s much you can explore to gain a deeper understanding.
Comodo has come a long way from its inception, and it does not look like it intends to stop anytime soon. With more developments and technological reforms coming in, we’ll keep coming up with such reads that help you gain a deeper understanding and mentally prepare you for their implementation.
Read also about Comodo SSL Review: Why it is the Best CA?