A

Public Key

is used to encrypt information and to verify digital signatures.  The owner’s public key should be shared with its trading partners.

A

Private Key

is used by the owner to decrypt and to digitally sign files.  The private key, typically protected by a password, should be kept secret by the owner and should NOT be shared with any one.  Since a private key is mathematically related to its public key, the information encrypted with the public key can be decrypted by its corresponding private key.

A

Key Pair

is the combination of a private key and its corresponding public key.

A Key Ring (otherwise known as a key store) is a small binary file which can store one or more OpenPGP keys. Public keys are stored in

Public Key Rings

and private keys are stored in

Secret Key Rings

. 

Default key rings are provided in

Managed File Transfer

. The location of the default public key ring file is

[installdirectory]/userdata/keys/pgp/pubring.pkr

and the location of the default secret key ring file is

[installdirectory]/userdata/keys/pgp/secring.skr

where [installdirectory] is the installation directory of the

Managed File Transfer

product.

For instance, you could store all of your trading partner's public keys in the pubring.pkr file and store your private key(s) in the secring.skr file.