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Certification authority hierarchies

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Certification authority hierarchies

The Microsoft public key infrastructure (PKI) supports a hierarchical certification authority (CA) model. A certification hierarchy provides scalability, ease of administration, and consistency with a growing number of commercial and other CA products.

In its simplest form, a certification hierarchy consists of a single CA. However, in general, a hierarchy will contain multiple CAs with clearly defined parent-child relationships. In this model, the child subordinate certification authorities are certified by their parent CA-issued certificates, which bind a certification authority's public key to its identity. The CA at the top of a hierarchy is referred to as the root authority, or root CA. The child CAs of the root CAs are called subordinate certification authorities (CAs).

In Windows XP and the Windows Server 2003 family, if you trust a root CA (by having its certificate in your Trusted Root Certification Authorities certificate store), you trust every subordinate CA in the hierarchy, unless a subordinate CA has had its certificate revoked by the issuing CA or has an expired certificate. Thus, any root CA is a very important point of trust in an organization and should be secured and maintained accordingly.

Verification of certificates thus requires trust in only a small number of root CAs. At the same time, it provides flexibility in the number of certificate-issuing subordinate CAs. There are several practical reasons for supporting multiple subordinate CAs, including:

  • Usage. Certificates may be issued for a number of purposes, such as secure e-mail and network authentication. The issuing policy for these uses may be distinct, and separation provides a basis for administering these polices.

  • Organizational divisions. There may be different policies for issuing certificates, depending upon an entity's role in the organization. Again, you can create subordinate CAs to separate and administer these policies.

  • Geographic divisions. Organizations may have entities at multiple physical sites. Network connectivity between these sites may dictate a requirement for multiple subordinate CAs to meet usability requirements.

  • Load balancing. If your PKI is going to support the issuing of a large number of certificates, having only one certification authority issue and manage all of these certificates can result in considerable network load for that single certification authority. Using multiple subordinate certification authorities to issue the same kind of certificates divides the network load between certification authorities.

  • Backup and fault tolerance. Multiple certification authorities increase the possibility that your network will always have operational certification authorities available to service users.

Such a certification authority hierarchy also provides administrative benefits, including:

  • Flexible configuration of the CA security environment to tailor the balance between security and usability, such as key strength, physical protection, and protection against network attacks. For example, you may choose to employ special purpose cryptographic hardware on a root CA, operate it in a physically secure area, or operate it offline. These may be unacceptable for subordinate CAs, due to cost or usability considerations.

  • The ability to "turn off" a specific portion of the CA hierarchy without affecting the established trust relationships. For example, you can easily shut down and revoke an issuing CA certificate that is associated with a specific geographic site without affecting other parts of the organization.

For more information, see Establishing a certification hierarchy