SQL Server Certificates and Asymmetric Keys Public Key
Cryptography (PKI) is a form of message secrecy in which a user
creates a public key and a private key. The private key is kept
secret, whereas the public key can be distributed to others.
Although the keys are mathematically related, the private key
cannot be easily derived by using the public key. The public key
is used to encrypt data and the private key is used to decrypt
data. A message that is encrypted by using the public key can
only be decrypted by using the correct private key. Since there
are two different keys, these keys are asymmetric. Certificates
and asymmetric keys are both ways to use asymmetric encryption.
Certificates are often used as containers for asymmetric keys
because they can contain more information such as expiry dates
and issuers. There is no difference between the two mechanisms
for the cryptographic algorithm, and no difference in strength
given the same key length. Generally, you use a certificate to
encrypt other types of