Chapter 12 Certificates

12.1.2 What You Need to Know About Certificates

Certification Authority

A Certification Authority (CA) issues certificates and guarantees the identity of each certificate owner. There are commercial certification authorities like CyberTrust or VeriSign and government certification authorities. You can use the ZyXEL Device to generate certification requests that contain identifying information and public keys and then send the certification requests to a certification authority.

Certificate File Formats

The certification authority certificate that you want to import has to be in one of these file formats:

•Binary X.509: This is an ITU-T recommendation that defines the formats for X.509 certificates.

•PEM (Base-64) encoded X.509: This Privacy Enhanced Mail format uses lowercase letters, uppercase letters and numerals to convert a binary X.509 certificate into a printable form.

•Binary PKCS#7: This is a standard that defines the general syntax for data (including digital signatures) that may be encrypted. The ZyXEL Device currently allows the importation of a PKS#7 file that contains a single certificate.

•PEM (Base-64) encoded PKCS#7: This Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format uses 64 ASCII characters to convert a binary PKCS#7 certificate into a printable form.

Finding Out More

See Section 12.6 on page 208 for technical background information on certificates.

12.2 The My Certificates Screen

This is the ZyXEL Device’s summary list of certificates and certification requests. Certificates display in black and certification requests display in gray. Click Security > Certificates > My Certificates to open the My Certificates screen.

Figure 108 My Certificates

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P-660HN-F1 User’s Guide