How to Obtain a Digital Certificate

A digital certificate is an electronic key that is used with a public key to confirm a person's or organization's identity. In the public key infrastructure that has emerged on the web, your signature must come from a trusted certificate authority (CA) so that users of your website will trust that your digital certificate is authentic. The most common use of a digital certificate is to make a secure connection to a website through the secure socket layer connection (https instead of http in your web browser). The webmaster of the site must obtain his digital certificate from a CA before providing commercial services on the Internet.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Navigate your web browser to the InstantSSL website listed in the Resources.

2. Select "Get It Free Now" from the menu options on the main web page.

3. Generate a certificate signing request (CSR) on your server to submit to the certificate authority. To do this on an Apache server, login to your web server and type this command at the console "openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout yourservernamehere.key -out server.csr." This will create your website's private key and prompt you to enter information to be included in your CSR request, such as the website's "country, state, organization, email." When complete, the CSR will be stored in the root directory of your web server.

4. Open the CSR file in a text editor and copy the text in the file. Go back to the InstantSSL website and paste the CSR text into the CSR text field on the website. After the text is entered, select the server type that your website has in the third options field on the website and select the "Next" menu button.

5. Validate your authenticity to InstantSSL. InstantSSL will verify that your information matches that on record for ownership of the website as well as send a confirmation email to the one registered to the domain name of the website. You must pass this validation for InstantSSL to confirm your identity. Once you pass the validation checks, a digital certificate verified by InstantSSL will be issued to you for use on your website.

Resources

• InstantSSL's Digital Certificate Home Page
• Ascertia.com's Certifying Authority Information Web Site