A digital certificate is an electronic "passport" that allows a person, computer or organization to exchange information securely over the Internet using the public key infrastructure (PKI). A digital certificate may also be referred to as a public key certificate.

Just like a passport, a digital certificate provides identifying information, is forgery resistant and can be verified because it was issued by an official, trusted agency. The certificate contains the name of the certificate holder, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder's public key (used for encrypting messages and digital signatures) and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority (CA) so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real.

To provide evidence that a certificate is genuine and valid, it is digitally signed by a root certificate belonging to a trusted certificate authority. Operating systems and browsers maintain lists of trusted CA root certificates so they can easily verify certificates that the CAs have issued and signed. When PKI is deployed internally, digital certificates can be self-signed.