An Offline Root Certificate Authority is a Certificate Authority (as defined in the X.509 Standard and ) which has been isolated from network access, and is often kept in a powered-down state. In a Public Key Infrastructure, the chain of trusted authorities begins with the Root Certificate Authority. Once the Root CA is installed and its Root Certificate is created, the next action taken by the administrator of the Root CA is to issue certificates authorizing Intermediate (or Subordinate) CAs. This creates the ability to issue, distribute and revoke digital certificates without the direct action of the Root CA.