Question

Your organization has implemented a public key infrastructure (PKI) for issuing certificates. Recently, your organization issued several certificates to a partner organization. You revoked the certificates today. However, management is concerned that the revocation request grace period will prevent the certificates from being revoked in a timely manner. Which statement is true of this period?

A) It relates to the maximum response time taken by the CA for a revocation.
B) It refers to the validity of a digital signature.
C) It refers to the time taken by a registration authority (RA) to register a user.
D) It refers to the grace period for a backup CA server to update itself.

Answer 1

The revocation request grace period in a PKI refers to the maximum time allowed for a CA to process a revocation request. This can create a window during which revoked certificates may still be considered valid, and systems should implement CRLs or OCSP to ensure timely dissemination of revocation status.

Step-by-step explanation:

The correct answer to your question about the revocation request grace period in a public key infrastructure (PKI) is A) It relates to the maximum response time taken by the Certificate Authority (CA) for a revocation. This grace period is essentially the time allowed for the CA to process and disseminate the revocation of a certificate once the revocation request has been made. During this period, the certificates may still be considered valid by some systems. This can be problematic when a certificate has been compromised, as there could be a window of time in which the invalid certificate can still be used.

In order to mitigate the risks associated with this grace period, it is essential to have a robust certificate revocation process in place, which includes the use of Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) or Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP), to ensure timely updates on the revocation status of certificates across the network.