Creating a root authority

A root Certificate Authority (CA) is the topmost entity in a hierarchy of digital certificates that establishes trust in a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The root CA issues and signs certificates for intermediate or issuing subordinate CAs, which in turn can issue certificates to end-users, servers, or devices.

To create a root CA:

1. Follow the steps described in Accessing your partitions to log into the PKIaaS interface as a user with any of these roles:

   • Owners
   • CA Administrators

2. Click Certificate Authorities in the sidebar.

   

3. Click Add and select Certificate Authority.

4. Select Root Authority.

   

5. Click Add and complete the following values.

   • CA Identifier
   • Friendly Name
   • Signing Key Details
   • Expiry Date
   • Enable CRL
   • Enable OCSP
   • Certificate Profiles
   • Subject

6. Click Create.

7. Check the details of the created CA — for example, the Serial Number of the Certificate Signing Certificate.

CA Identifier

Write a unique identifier for the new CA in your PKI hierarchy. This identifier:

• Must contain 2-18 characters
• Can only include lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens (’-’), and underscores (’_')

ℹ After deleting a CA, wait 24 hours before creating a CA with the same identifier.

Friendly Name

Write a descriptive name for the CA in your PKIaaS partition.

Signing Key Details

Select a combination of cryptosystem and hash algorithm for the new CA to sign certificates.

ℹ The production release does not yet support some of the combinations listed below.

Expiry Date

Select an expiry date for the Certificate Signing Certificate of the new CA.

⚠ After the expiry date, the CA cannot operate if you have not renewed the CA certificate.

Enable CRL

This read-only box is always checked as PKIaaS authorities always provide a CRL publishing endpoint.

Enable OCSP

Check this box to enable an OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) service for the new certificate authority.

ℹ This feature requires a subscription that includes the OCSP Service. See Checking your subscriptions for how to check your current subscription.

Certificate Profiles

Select the Authority certificate profiles the new root CA will support for issuing certificates to authorities.

1. Click + to expand the profiles on the selected groups.
2. Select the check boxes of the profiles you want to enable.

Subject

Enter a value for each RFC5280 attribute in the certificate subject’s Distinguished Name (DN).

Alternatively, you can:

1. Toggle the Advanced Subject switch
2. Type a Distinguished Name (DN) including additional attributes.

The resulting Distinguished Name will uniquely identify the Certificate Signing Certificate of your new CA — for example:

CN=MyRootCA, O=MyOrganization, L=MyCity, ST=MyState, C=US