---
title: Managing servers and certificates
description: "Overview of the PingDirectory certificate types: listener certificates for TLS and inter-server certificates for topology authentication."
component: pingdirectory
version: 10.3
page_id: pingdirectory:managing_servers_and_certificates:pd_ds_servers_certificates
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/11.1/managing_servers_and_certificates/pd_ds_servers_certificates.html
llms_txt: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/llms.txt
docs_for_agents: https://developer.pingidentity.com/build-with-ai/docs-for-agents.md
revdate: 2024-07-02T00:00:00Z
superseded_by: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/11.1/managing_servers_and_certificates/pd_ds_servers_certificates.html
---

# Managing servers and certificates

The following provides a detailed description of PingDirectory server certificate types.

The PingDirectory server uses two main types of certificates:

* Listener certificates

  Used to secure communication through TLS.

* Inter-server certificates

  Used to authenticate between server instances in a topology.