Certificate policy

A certificate policy (CP) is a document which aims to state what are the different actors of a public key infrastructure (PKI), their roles and their duties. This document is published in the PKI perimeter.

When in use with X.509 certificates, a specific field can be set to include a link to the associated certificate policy. Thus, during an exchange, any relying party has an access to the assurance level associated with the certificate, and can make a decision concerning the level of trust to put in the certificate.