Final answer:
A digital certificate binds the user's identity with their public key to ensure that the public key is legitimately associated with the individual or entity that holds the corresponding private key.
Step-by-step explanation:
A digital certificate is a technology used to associate or bind two entities together to secure communications over the internet. The correct answer to what two entities a digital certificate associates is: The user's identity with their public key. This binding ensures that a public key belongs to the individual, organization, server, or device that holds the corresponding private key.
Digital certificates are crucial for establishing a trusted connection between a user and a service, and they are an essential component of many security protocols such as SSL/TLS, which is commonly used in HTTPS connections to secure web browsing. A digital certificate associates or binds together the user's identity with their public key. The digital certificate is issued by a trusted certificate authority and includes information about the user's identity, such as their name and email address, and their public key. This binding is used to verify the user's identity when they are using digital signatures or encryption.