The administrator or the certificate authority (CA) can revoke a certificate. Revocation prevents use of the public key for decryption.

Certificates are issued with a planned lifetime. That lifetime is defined in the Years until expired field when the certificate is created. A certificate is valid until its expiration date. However, circumstances may cause a certificate to become invalid before the expiration date. Under such circumstances, the issuing Certificate Authority (CA) or the administrator should revoke the certificate.

The certificate status is changed to revoked.