Authority

Authority holds the access information related to the certificate authority technology, i.e., it contains the information of which CA to use and the attributes of the CA.

The information held by the Authority is defined by the Connector. Authority Provider uses Attributes to get the data needed to establish the connection to the CA.

Authority has the following parameters:

The version of the Authority Provider interface the Authority is created against determines its shape. A Connector can implement more than one version; the Authority is bound to one of them.

Parameter	Description
Name	Name of the Authority
Authority Provider	Identification of the Connector implementing the Authority Provider interface
Kind	Kind of the CA technology implemented by the Connector. Applies to v1 and v2 authorities; a v3 Authority is not scoped by Kind.
Attributes	Attributes defined by the Connector implementation. For v1 and v2 authorities the definitions depend on the selected Kind; for a v3 Authority the Connector supplies one set of definitions.

Authority Provider

• One Connector can serve for more than one Authority.
• Inputs for the Connector to determine the CA are captured and stored in the Authority.
• A v3 Authority keeps no state on the Connector side — the platform stores the Attributes and sends them with every operation. A v1 or v2 Authority has a counterpart authority instance created in the Connector that the platform references.

For more information, refer to the Authority Provider v2 and Authority Provider v3 descriptions.

RA Profile

RA Profile is created on top of the Authority. For more information, refer to RA Profile.