What type of digital certificate is signed by the entity that issued it rather than by a certificate authority?

What type of digital certificate is signed by the entity that issued it rather than by a certificate authority?

• A. Self-signed certificate
• B. Certificate signing request (CSR)
• C. Wildcard domain
• D. Certificate

Answer: (A)

Self-signed certificates are signed by the entity that created them, not by a trusted external Certificate Authority. In a standard PKI setup, a CA vouches for identities by signing certificates, and clients trust a certificate because its chain leads to a trusted root that’s already installed. With a self-signed certificate, there is no CA in the chain—the organization signs the certificate with its own private key. This makes it workable for internal systems or test environments, but external clients won’t automatically trust it unless the self-signed certificate (or its root) is manually installed as a trusted issuer. A certificate signing request is just the data you send to a CA to obtain a certificate, not a certificate itself. A wildcard domain refers to a certificate that covers all subdomains under a domain, which is about scope, not who signs it. The term “certificate” on its own is generic and doesn’t specify the signing authority.

Self-signed certificates are signed by the entity that created them, not by a trusted external Certificate Authority. In a standard PKI setup, a CA vouches for identities by signing certificates, and clients trust a certificate because its chain leads to a trusted root that’s already installed. With a self-signed certificate, there is no CA in the chain—the organization signs the certificate with its own private key. This makes it workable for internal systems or test environments, but external clients won’t automatically trust it unless the self-signed certificate (or its root) is manually installed as a trusted issuer.

A certificate signing request is just the data you send to a CA to obtain a certificate, not a certificate itself. A wildcard domain refers to a certificate that covers all subdomains under a domain, which is about scope, not who signs it. The term “certificate” on its own is generic and doesn’t specify the signing authority.