n.a file issued by a certificate authority that binds an individual or organization to a public key so that the identity of the individual or organization can be authenticatedRFC 4949, 2007digital certificate ¶ A certificate document in the form of a digital data object (a data object used by a computer) to which is appended a computed digital signature value that depends on the data object. ¶ Deprecated Usage: IDOCs SHOULD NOT use this term to refer to a signed CRL [certificate revocation list] or CKL [compromised key list]. Although the recommended definition can be interpreted to include other signed items, the security community does not use the term with those meanings.