Certificate Authorities

Certificate authorities prepare digital certificates to associate public keys with entities that a user communicates with using the secure HTTPS protocol in a web browser. The key is used by the browser to encrypt data transmitted by users to the servers of the entity owning the web site. In order to prevent the transmission from being hacked by someone pretending to be the trusted entity, the user's browser checks the certificate and the public key it receives against public keys received from the certificate authority.

In Chrome you can find a list of the certificate authorities it uses under Settings . . . Privacy and security . . . Security . . . Manage certificates . . . on the Trusted Root Certification Authorities tab.

IdenTrust, Comodo (Sectigo), VeriSign, DigiCert and GoDaddy are some of the most widely used certificate authorities.

Note that It is possible to import a certificate authority into your web browser.