A digital certificate provides an electronic means of proving your identity in order to securely conduct business with the State of Washington online. You can use certificates to encrypt information so that only the intended recipient can read it, to identify yourself in electronic transactions, to digitally sign information to provide assurance to the recipient that it has not been changed in transit, and to verify that you actually sent the transmission.

Personal certificates authenticate an individual and are used to digitally sign and encrypt electronic documents. Server or SSL certificates are issued to Web servers and are used to authenticate servers to Web browsers. This is used to protect information such as credit card numbers and account information on the Web.