Book details of 'Understanding PKI: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations, Second Edition'

Title	Understanding PKI: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations, Second Edition
Author(s)	Carlisle Adams, Steve Lloyd
ISBN	0672323915
Language	English
Published	November 2002
Publisher	Addison-Wesley Pub Co

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Understanding PKI: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations, Second Edition':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Part one is about concepts. Chapter one (and the first chapter of every section) is an outline of the contents of this part of the book. A simple introduction to symmetric cryptography, and the basics of asymmetric, is provided in chapter two. The purpose and components of a public key infrastructure (PKI) is reviewed in chapter three. Chapter four relates core PKI to the standard security model of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Some extension of the basic services is given in chapter five (although there is no mention of the most common hybrid form of encryption). Certificates and some fundamentals of certification are in chapter six. Chapter seven looks at key and certificate management. Certificate revocation, in chapter eight, is oddly undetailed in comparison to the previous material. Chapters nine to thirteen cover, in short order, trust models, certificate and information dissemination, operational factors, and digital signature legislation. What PKI does, and doesn't, do is presented in chapter fourteen, which probably should have come earlier in the book. Chapter fifteen speculates on the future of PKI. Chapter sixteen, and the last chapter of every part, outlines conclusions and further reading. The material is very terse: in this case, only two pages. Part two is entitled standards. There is the introduction, and then chapter eighteen lists major standards. The status of some of those standards is discussed in chapter nineteen. Chapter twenty provides examples of the piloting of standards, and points out that the standards do not always confer interoperability. The reading list in chapter twenty one is a bit bigger than that in sixteen. Part three concerns deployment. There is a generic cost/benefit argument in chapter twenty three. Chapters twenty four and twenty five basically reiterate earlier material in regard to deployment. Some specific issues are mentioned in regard to the business models discussed in chapter twenty six. There are almost no conclusions and suggestions for further reading in chapter twenty seven. This book does cover many issues associated with PKI, but in a very pedestrian fashion. There is nothing here that is not covered by many volumes dealing with cryptography as a general topic, such as Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" (see reviews) or the simpler works like Mel and Baker's "Cryptography Decrypted" (cf.BKCRPDEC.RVW). Indeed, any number of general security texts provide as much detail on PKI as does this book. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003
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