How To Set Up A Certificate Authority In 10 Minutes

Mike Fratto , 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.

<Previous
1
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
16
Next >

E-mail
Share

Now we are going to submit the request to the CA for signing. We are doing this ourselves, so it seems like a lot of steps, but you can assign people tasks such as reviewing and approving requests. Go to your certificate servers web page, by default http://<hostname>/certserv

Select Request a Certificate->advanced certificate request->"Submit a certificate request by using a base-64-encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file."

We are going to submit our request here. You can also create a certificate request by filling in the fields, but in most cases, you will generate the request on the device and submit that to the CA.