Locating network resources for an entity based on its digital certificate

A host device for use in a communication network, comprising:

• a first component configured to receive a digital certificate from a first entity over the communication system;
• a second component configured to extract information from at least one predetermined field of the digital certificate;
• and
• a third component and a processor operatively associated with the third component, said third component comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer readable instructions that when executed cause the processor to (i) create a resource locator for a certificate revocation list repository using the information extracted from the certificate and a location generator function, wherein the location generation function comprises rules used to derive the resource locator, and wherein the resource locator includes a dynamic portion that is determined by the third component via the location generation function using the extracted information as input data, said resource locator also including a static portion that is combined with the dynamic portion to form the resource locator, and (ii) cause a network resource to be contacted over the communication network using the resource locator that is created to obtain information concerning an entity identified by the digital certificate.

At least one non-transitory computer-readable medium encoded with instructions which, when executed by a processor, performs a method including:

• causing information to be extracted from at least one predetermined field of one or more digital certificates each identifying a respective entity;
• for each of the one or more digital certificates, causing a location generation function to create a resource locator, comprising at least one static portion and at least one dynamic portion, for a certificate revocation list repository using the extracted information as input, wherein the location generation function comprises rules used to derive the resource locator, and wherein said at least one dynamic portion is derived by the location generation function from the information extracted from the digital certificate;
• and
• for each of the one or more digital certificates, causing a network resource located using the resource locator to be contacted over a communication network to obtain requested information concerning the respective entity identified by each of the one or more digital certificates.