The present invention discloses a central
certificate management system for
thin client devices in data networks and has particular applications to systems having a large number of the thin clients serviced by a
proxy server through which the thin clients communicate with a plurality of secure
server computers over a data network. According to one aspect, the present invention provides a
certificate management module that causes the
server device to manage digital certificates for each of the
thin client devices. To minimize the latency of obtaining certificates for each of the
thin client devices, the
certificate management module reserves a fixed number of free certificates signed by a
certificate authority and their respective private keys in a certificate
database and frequently updates the free certificate according to a certificate updating message. Whenever a user account is created for a thin
client device, the certificate management module fetches one or more free certificates from the certificate
database and associate the fetched certificates to the created account and meanwhile the certificate management module creates new free certificates with the
certificate authority to fill in the certificate
database. Apart from the tradition of obtaining certificates locally in
client devices that normally have sufficient computing power, the present invention uses the computing resources in a
server device to carry out the task of obtaining and maintaining certificates asynchronously in the
proxy server and further. These and other features in the present invention dramatically minimize the demands for computing power and memory in thin
client devices like mobile devices, cellular phones, landline telephones or
Internet appliance controllers.