A3 Online Help

Menu path: Configuration > Integration Overview > PKI Certificate Authorities.

Creating a New Certificate Authority

A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a set of software, data, and procedures for creating and managing certificates. Certificates are pieces of data that identifies a person, client computer, server computer or other entity. A key component of a PKI is the generation of public-private encryption key pairs. The pairs are mathematically related such that data encrypted using one of the pair can only be decrypted by the other. Public keys are embedded in certificates. Endpoints prove their identity by encrypting data with their private key, which is verified using the certificate's public key.

Certificate Authorities are the parties that sign certificates. Signing is process by which the data in an endpoint's certificate is combined with the Certificate Authority's (CA) public key. This allows a party receiving the endpoint's certificate to validate that the certificate was generated by a party that they trust. If EAP-TLS authentication is to be used in A3, CAs generated at this step must be copied into the RADIUS section of SSL Certificates so A3 will trust endpoint certificates generated by the CA. See Using CA Certificates as RADIUS Certificates for a discussion on how to accomplish this. Also see the Note below concerning trusted CAs.

Note

The CAs generated by A3's PKI are not publicly trusted CAs. They are intended for use only within an organization. Publicly trusted certificates can be generated using A3's SSL Certificates interface.

Select

to create a new CA, or click on an existing one to view the contents. Existing entries offer three operations:

- clone the CA entry and then enter the New Certificate Authority dialog.
- the contents of the CA certificate are copied to the clipboard for use in other contexts. See Using CA Certificates as RADIUS Certificates for a further discussion.
- open the dialog for the creation of a new template based on the selected CA.

Note

The pfpki service must be restarted after each CA is created. Use the button above the table.

Once created CAs may not be deleted. The dialog for creating entries has the following fields:


Field	Usage	Example
Common Name	The common name of the CA.	Example_Root_CA
Email	The email address of the CA's administrator	admin@example.com
Organization	The name of the organization.	Example Widgets Inc.
Country	The country of the CA. Choose from the drop-down list.	United States of America
State or Province	The major location of the CA within the Country.	California
Locality	The locality of the CA within the State or Province.	Anytown
Street Address	The street address for the Organization.	123 Main Street
Postal Code	The postal code for the Organization.	91234
Key Type	The type of key to be generated for the CA's keys. One of: KEY_ECDSA KEY_RSA KEY_DSA	KEY_RSA
Key Size	The size of the keys to be generated. One of: 2048 4096	4096
Digest	The type of cryptographic checksum to be generated. One of: MD(2,5)WithRSA SHA(1,256,384,512)WithRSA ECDSAWithSHA(1,256,384,512) SHA(256,384,512)WithRSAPSS PureEd25519	SHA256WithRSA
Key Usage	The permitted usage types for the certificate. One or more of: digitalSignature nonRepudiation keyEncipherment dataEncipherment keyAgreement keyCertSign cRLSign encipherOnly decipherOnly If no values are specified, all uses are permitted.
Extended Key Usage	Additional usage types for the certificate. One or more of: serverAuth clientAuth codeSigning emailProtection timeStamping msCodeInd msCodeCom msCTLSign msSGC msEFS nsSGC If no values are specified, all extended uses are permitted.
Days	The number of days for which the CA certificate will be valid.	1000

Select the button to generate the certificate. After a few seconds a new Certificates field will be created and filled in with the encoded certificate. The CA entry is now complete and may not be modified. Exit back to the Certificate Authorities list or select the to create a clone of the current entry. A cloned entry may be used to make a new CA modified from the last CA.