Improvements in or relating to public-key certificate management

摘要

Methods and systems for public-key certificate management comprise storing digital certificates in data structures that allow the manager to provide a verifiable proof about the validity status of a certificate. The certificates are stored in two data structures in a database. One data structure stores items in chronological order and is queried to establish a proof that a later snapshot of the database is an extension of an earlier snapshot of the database. Another data structure is ordered by user identifier and is queried to establish a proof that a given digital certificate is currently valid.