A Probabilistic Model for Evaluating the Operational Cost of PKI-based Financial Transactions

The use of PKI in large scale environments suffers some inherent problems concerning the options to adopt for the optimal cost-centered operation of the system. In this paper a Markov based probability model has been applied and a performability indicator has been introduced for assisting the evaluation of the operational cost of the system in a decision support process. Considering the unavailability of the Certification Authority server, three different strategies have been evaluated for determining the optimal one.