Pushing trusted certificates to Notes® clients

You can create cross-certificates in the Domino® Directory for Internet certifiers and Notes® certifiers and then push the cross-certificates to the Contacts application on Notes® clients. The cross-certificates are used to establish client trust of a certifier when accessing servers, reading encrypted S/MIME mail, or installing signed Notes® client plug-ins. When you push cross certificates, users are not required to create the cross-certificates or retrieve them from the Domino® Directory.

About this task

There are two ways to push certificates to the Contacts application: through customization of the Notes® client installation media or through security policy settings. You can also push Internet certifiers to clients and enable users to create cross-certificates themselves. The security policy settings approach provides more flexibility because it allows you to more easily add, remove, or update certificates in Contacts after installation. For example, when you use security policy settings, if a certificate expires and you replace it with a new one in the Domino® Directory, you can cross-certify the new certificate and add the cross-certificate to the policy to automatically push it to clients. Or, if you revoke trust of a certificate by deleting its cross-certificate from the Domino® Directory, the cross-certificate is automatically deleted from Contacts.

Perform the following steps to push trusted certificates to clients:

Procedure

  1. If you want to push trust of an Internet certifier, first import the certifier into the Domino® Directory.
  2. Create cross-certificates in the Domino® Directory for any Internet and Notes® certifiers that you want clients to trust.
  3. Use one of the following methods to push certificates to clients' Contacts:
    • Customize the Notes® client install kit. For more information, see Customizing an install kit to set certifier and trust defaults.
    • Configure security policy settings. For more information, see Pushing trusted certificates to clients through security policy settings.