Specifications
37
Creating a CA
A Certificate Authority is required to be able to issue certificates to the clients. This process defines the
appliance as the authority to be able to issue and validate the client certificates that will be used to log into
the server.
An external authority can also be used; the only thing required is the importing of the private key part of the
certificates issued by this authority for each client so that the appliance is able to identify each client
certificate being used to login with.
Step 1 From the Action menu select the Create CA action.
For a server which already has a CA, this step will be replaced by the Reset CA action. In this
situation the CA does not have to be reinitialized each time.
Step 2 This action loads the Create CA wizard. This wizard guides the user through the steps required to
configure a CA for the system. Each certificate created for a user will be issued by this authority.
The information must all be completed. The information is then used to create a valid authority. The
stamp of authenticity is all based around the content that is provided here, it is recommended that
correct information be supplied.
The required information and their meaning are detailed below.
• Common Name: The name the certificate should be referred to.
• Location: Where the authority is based
• Organizational Unit: The department of the authority
• Company: The name of the company or entity to which the certificate should be registered.
Step 3 To encrypt this information and the subsequent generated private keys the certificate requires an
encrypting password.
Step 4 The strength of the private keys is next required. The larger the size the more complex the keys.
Step 5 Finally a summary I shown of the certificate that is about to be created. Pressing the Finish button will
create the certificate else the Previous button will go back to each step and allow amendments to take
place.
The newly generated authority will now be used to issue all client certificates. Generating a CSR