Securing the electronic market: The KEYSTONE Public Key Infrastructure architecture

In this paper, the unified, abstract KEYSTONE Public Key Infrastructure is presented. This architecture consists of a reference model, a functional ar chitecture specification, and a set of technologies that can he used for im plementing the functional units, along with all relevant standards. It was derived within the course of the KEYSTONE project, which was funded by the European Commission under the Electronic Trust Services II Programme. The p roposed PKI architecture guarantees openness, scalability, flexibility, ext ensibility, integration with existing TTP and information infrastructure, t ransparency and, above all, security. Thus, it enjoys all the desirable cha racteristics and fulfils all those criteria that are essential for a PKI to constitute a successful framework for the development of inter-domain and international Trusted Services.