GlobalSign Announces Support for Transparent SSL Certificate Lifecycle Mgmt

Portsmouth, NH (Gawkwire.com) GlobalSign Inc. (www.globalsign.com <http://www.globalsign.com> ), one of the longest established Certification Authorities (CA) and specialists in SSL Certificate lifecycle management yesterday announced the beginning of the end for SSL Certificate installation issues across a range of server / OS platforms.  Following a collaboration with the Microsoft public key infrastructure (PKI) team responsible for digital certificate services in the upcoming Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 products, GlobalSign was able to demonstrate a fully operational WS-Trust (Web Services Trust) implementation at yesterday’s Microsoft Tech•Ed <http://www.msteched.com/>  North America 2009 conference in Los Angeles.  In addition, GlobalSign also announced the availability of their lightweight One-Click SSL API to platform providers who are unable to support a full WS-Trust model yet need to meet the core improvements in the SSL Certificate lifecycle management process that this PKI
technology revolution marks.   

One of the fundamental changes offered by both WS-Trust and One-Click SSL is the removal of the need to generate and handle a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).  The CSR process now happens silently on the platform, allowing GlobalSign (as the Certification Authority) and stakeholder to seamlessly follow industry best practice for keylength and hashing algorithm, avoiding the need to explain best practices to non tech savvy buyers.  The resulting improved purchasing process results in a clear separation of duties for purchasing teams and system administrators, offering a low friction user experience to everyone involved. An additional process improvement is support for silent automated renewals of expiring certificates eliminating the need to worry about costly system downtime due to unexpected expirations.

The “PKI in a Web Services World” session covered the essential changes that Microsoft and GlobalSign made to their enrolment and installation services in order to support the WS-Trust model for certificate installation.  This in turn enabled GlobalSign to deliver a fully transparent SSL Certificate lifecycle management experience on top of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2.  The benefits will now be reaped by GlobalSign’s existing enterprise customers and hosting partners as an increasing number of platforms offer the improved lifecycle management processes over the coming months.

“SSL Certificate adoption and usage continues to dramatically increase across a range of industries and therefore moving forward, the lifecycle management technologies supported by a Certification Authority, such as GlobalSign, offer a clear differentiator.  This is especially true for web hosting providers and for large enterprises where large deployments of SSL Certificates are required across disparate platforms.” said Steve Roylance, Worldwide Business Development Director for GlobalSign and visionary behind the process improvements realized through the
OneClickSSL model.    

Prior to the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, enterprises interested in trialing the improved experience should apply at (www.globalsign.com/wstrust.html <http://www.globalsign.com/wstrust.html> ).