Sits at the top of a PKI as the ultimate source of trust. Microsoft Cloud PKI uses a two-tier design in which it signs the issuing CAs, with a lifetime anywhere between 5 and 25 years.
Also called root certificate authority.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Root CA in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- PKI
Public key infrastructure, the certificate authorities and procedures that issue certificates. Certificate-based authentication cannot work without it.
- Cloud PKI
An Intune Suite service that hosts root and issuing CAs, along with their AIA and CRL endpoints, in the cloud. It issues SCEP certificates straight to Intune-managed devices, so neither a certificate connector nor NDES is needed.
Related terms
- trust store
A collection of certificates that software relies on when making TLS connections. The orchestrator needs one covering each server it contacts, and the VCF Installer must hold the Root CA certificates of any proxy.
- Trusted root certificate
How Application Gateway v2 trusts a backend: the .cer root CA certificate for the backend's certificate is added in backend settings. Certificates issued by well-known CAs don't require it.