Digital certificates are the digital equivalent (i.e. electronic format) of physical or paper certificates. Examples of physical certificates are driver's licenses, passports or membership cards. Certificates serve as identity of an individual for a certain purpose, e.g. a driver's license identifies someone who can legally drive in a particular country. Likewise, a digital certificate can be presented electronically to prove your identity or your right to access information or services on the Internet.

Digital Certificates serve as your identity in the digital world. Just as a passport or a driver's license is used to uniquely identify individuals in the physical world, digital certificates are used to identify entities in digital transactions. Based on Public Key Cryptography, these Digital Certificates associate every entity with a unique pair of credentials - the public key and the private key. Only the owner of a Digital Certificate has access to the private key and can use it to digitally sign and encrypt any digital information such as emails, forms, files etc

Personal Digital Certificates
These are issued to individuals, companies and government organizations. They can be used both for personal and commercial purposes such as e-procurement, electronic banking, electronic data interchange (EDI), and membership-based on-line services, where security is a major concern.