The primary purpose of PKI in IT is to establish trust by enabling:

• A. Trusted signatures, encryption, and identity between people, systems, and things
• B. Secure password storage
• C. Routine data archiving
• D. Real-time analytics

Answer: (A)

Public key infrastructure (PKI) provides a framework that uses public/private key pairs and digital certificates to establish trust in digital interactions. It enables three core capabilities that work together: digital signatures to prove who created a message and to verify that it hasn’t been altered, encryption to protect the confidentiality of data as it moves between parties, and certificate-based identity verification so people, systems, and devices can reliably authenticate each other. These elements together create trust across networks, services, and devices. While secure password storage, routine data archiving, and real-time analytics are important IT practices, they are not the primary purpose of PKI.