Streamlined CSR generation, certificate enrollment, and certificate delivery
View Patent ↗The process of acquiring SSL certificates for enterprise SSL customers is improved by reducing the number of steps used to acquire the SSL certificate and streamlining the process. An on-line CSR generator on the certificate enrollment form is used to submit the customer information (i.e. Common Name, Organizational Unit, Organization, City/Locality, State/Province, and Country Code) and generate the CSR. By making the CSR generation part of the enrollment process, the administrator can use the same enrollment form to submit the customer information along with the contact information pertinent to the enterprise.
1. A method for acquiring digital certificates from a certificate authority (CA), comprising:
receiving an enrollment form with an online CSR generator;
capturing on the certificate enrollment form customer information provided by an administrator to generate the digital certificate;
generating a private key using the on-line CSR generator;
encrypting the private key using an administrator-supplied password;
storing the encrypted private key in a transient memory of the client machine from which the certificate enrollment information including the CSR is submitted;
sending information to decrypt the encrypted private key;
decrypting the private key and storing the private key in the transient memory;
determining whether a domain name provided by the administrator has previously been authenticated by the CA as being administrated by the administrator;
determining, in response to receiving the enrollment form, whether the administrator's identity has been authenticated;
upon determining that the domain name and the administrator's identity are authentic, issuing the digital certificate;
delivering, in response to receiving the enrollment form, the digital certificate to the results page of the enrollment form, wherein the digital certificate is delivered through a secure channel; and installing the digital certificate.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital certificate is an SSL certificate.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprises selecting the digital certificate type from the group comprising of premium, standard, and extended validation.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital certificate is formatted in PKCS12 and includes the digital certificate and the password-encrypted private key.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein installing the digital certificate further comprises:
installing the digital certificate on a Microsoft IIS server.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital certificate is formatted in separate PEM (based64-encoded) X.509.
7. The method of claim 6 wherein installing the digital certificate further comprises:
installing the digital certificate on an Apache or iPlanet server.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital certificate is formatted in PKCS7 certificate blob and PEM (base64-encoded password-encrypted) private key blob.
9. The method of claim 8 wherein installing the digital certificate further comprises: and
installing the digital certificate on an Apache or iPlanet server.
10. The method of claim 1 wherein the domain name has been pre-vetted.
11. The method of claim 1 wherein the administrator's identity has been pre-vetted.
12. The method of claim 1 wherein capturing on the certificate enrollment form customer information comprises capturing:
a common name;
an organization unit;
an organization name; and
a location.