Certificates

The Certificates section of the Admin Web Console gives access to functions for carrying out various activities with certificates such as: generating Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs), importing signed certificates, and other administrative functions like being able to enable or disable a certificate for use.

The only way to use Signum with certificates is to have them issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) using a certificate signing request. This is done to ensure that the private key that is generated when a new CSR is created only exists within the FIPs boundary of the HSM. The private key is non-exportable from the HSM. This method ensures a high level of security for the private signing key and provides for mechanisms to generate attestation in the future to prove that the key was created within an HSM.