How To Set Up A Certificate Authority In 10 Minutes
, March 28, 2012 Having a company owned certificate authority makes managing your network devices simpler and more secure. There is nothing inherently wrong with self-signed certs, but you can do better. You can build a CA issue your first certificate in about 10 minutes. Here is how to do it.
If you point your browser to https://<host name>/certserv (in my case https://example.example.com/certserv), you will get an error because we haven't installed a certificate nor enabled SSL on that website. The installation only puts the certificate pages on the site. We don't want that, so let's enable SSL. By the way, the steps from here on out are similar to what you will do when creating certificates for your IT appliances. Bonus.
We need to generate a certificate request. To do so, we'll open IIS Manager and find the website we are working with. In my case, the Default Web Site. Right click on the site and select Properties->Server Certificate->Create a new certificate
Creating a meaningful name. It's only used by you. Next set your organization (usually your company name) and Organizational Unit (your department). You can enter anything, but a meaningful name will be helpful.
