Okuzeka
Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Digital certificate

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, digital certificate means: An electronic document that links a public key to an identity, such as a website or a person, and is signed by a trusted certificate authority.

In Turkish: dijital sertifika, sayısal sertifika, sertifika

How it is used

Mostly called just a 'certificate' or 'cert'. Websites use TLS certificates for HTTPS; teams issue, install, renew and revoke them. An expired certificate is a classic cause of outages and browser warnings.

Example sentences

  1. The site is showing a warning because its digital certificate expired last night.

  2. We use a script to renew our digital certificates automatically every 60 days.

Common collocations

  • TLS certificate
  • renew a certificate
  • certificate authority
  • expired certificate
  • self-signed certificate
  • TLSTransport Layer Security: the standard protocol that encrypts data travelling between two systems, such as a browser and a website, and checks the server's identity.
  • public-key cryptographyA type of cryptography that uses a pair of related keys: a public key that can be shared with anyone and a private key that its owner keeps secret.
  • digital signatureA cryptographic value attached to a message, document or file that proves who created it and shows that it has not been changed since it was signed.
  • encryption keyA secret value, usually a long string of bits, that an encryption algorithm uses to lock and unlock data. Without it, the encrypted data cannot be read.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: