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User Identification for Policy Enforcement > Configuring user identification and authentication > Secure manual authentication > Generating keys and certificates
Generating keys and certificates
Administrator Help | Forcepoint Web Security and Forcepoint URL Filtering | v8.5.x
Related topics:
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Manual authentication
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Setting authentication rules for specific machines
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Secure manual authentication
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Activating secure manual authentication
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Accepting the certificate within the client browser
A certificate consists of a public key, used to encrypt data, and a private key, used to decipher data. Certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). You can generate a certificate from an internal certificate server, or obtain a client certificate from any third-party CA, such as VeriSign.
The CA issuing the client certificate must be trusted by web protection software. Typically, this is determined by a browser setting.
There are many tools that you can use to generate a self-signed certificate, including the OpenSSL toolkit (available from openssl.org).
Regardless of the method you choose for generating the certificate, use the following general steps.
1.
Generate a private key (server.key).
For the best browser compatibility, an Elliptic Curve key should be generated using either the secp256r1 (aka P-256) or secp384r1 (aka P-384) named curves.
2.
Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) with the private key.
 
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Important 
When prompted for the CommonName, enter the IP address of the Filtering Service machine. If you skip this step, client browsers will display a security certificate error.
A separate certificate must be generated for each Filtering Service.
3.
Submit the CSR to a CA to be signed or use the CSR to create a self-signed certificate (server.crt).
The certificate should be signed using SHA-256 or a similar algorithm in the SHA-2 family.
4.
Save the server.crt and server.key files in a location that you software can access, and where they can be read by Filtering Service.
a.
If OpenSSL is used to generate a certificate, use the following commands:
openssl ecparam -name secp384r1 -genkey -out <name>.key
openssl req -new -key <name>.key -out <name>.csr
You will be prompted to enter the required data fields for the certificate.
b.
To create a self-signed certificate from the CSR, use the command
openssl x509 -req -in <name>.csr -out <name>.crt -signkey <name>.key -days <days before expiration> -sha256

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User Identification for Policy Enforcement > Configuring user identification and authentication > Secure manual authentication > Generating keys and certificates
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