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Oracle Web Services Manager wrote:In many cases, Web services security tools such as OWSM rely on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) environments. A PKI uses cryptographic keys (mathematical functions used to encrypt or decrypt data). Keys can be private or public. In an asymmetric cipher model, the receiving party's public key is used to encrypt plaintext, and the receiving party's matching private key is used to decrypt the ciphertext. Also, a private key is used to create a digital signature by signing the message, and the public key is used for verifying the signature. Public-key certificates (or certificates, for short) are used to guarantee the integrity of public keys.