ISO 20828:2006 establishes a uniform practice for the issuing and management of security certificates for use in Public Key Infrastructure applications. Assuming that all entities, intending to set up a secure data exchange to other entities based on private and public keys, are able to provide their own certificate, the certificate management scheme guarantees that the entities get all additional information needed to establish trust to other entities, from a single source in a simple and unified format. The certificate management is flexible with respect to the relations between Certification Authorities, not requesting any hierarchical structure. It does not prescribe centralized directories or the like, being accessible by all entities involved. With these properties the management scheme is optimised for applications in the automotive domain.

ISO 20828:2006 details the role and responsibilities of the Certification Authority relating to certificate issuing and distribution. It specifies how to handle certificate validity and certificate policies. This is the prerequisite for each entity to make sure it can actually trust another entity when intending to exchange data of a specific kind with it.