Internet Engineering Task Force (ietf) Trust Anchor Management Requirements

A trust anchor represents an authoritative entity via a public key and associated data. The public key is used to verify digital signatures, and the associated data is used to constrain the types of information for which the trust anchor is authoritative. A relying party uses trust anchors to determine if a digitally signed object is valid by verifying a digital signature using the trust anchor’s public key, and by enforcing the constraints expressed in the associated data for the trust anchor. This document describes some of the problems associated with the lack of a standard trust anchor management mechanism and defines requirements for data formats and push-based protocols designed to address these problems.