Preparing the CSR
When purchasing an SSL certificate, the certification authority will request you to provide a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). A CSR is a block of encrypted text that is generated on the server that the certificate will be used on. It contains information that will be included in your certificate such as your organization name, common name (domain name), locality, and country. It also contains the public key that will be included in your certificate. A private 2048-bit key will also be created at the same time which you should store in a safe place.
To prepare your certificate proceed as follows:
- Click Prepare Certificate Request
.
The Prepare Certificate Request appears. Enter the required information into the following fields:
Parameter
Description
Domain Name
The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your server. This must match exactly what you type in your web browser or you receive a name mismatch error. For example *.google.com, mail.google.com.
Organization
The legal name of your organization. This should not be abbreviated and should include suffixes such as Inc, Corp, or LLC, for example My Spy Company, Inc..
Department
The division of your organization handling the certificate.
City
The city where your organization is located.
State/Province
The state/region where your organization is located. This should not be abbreviated, for example Califiornia.
Country
Select the country in which your organization is located from the dropdown list.
Private Key Password
Enter the password that encodes the private key. This is not mandatory but recommended.
Private Key Password Confirmation
Reenter the password for confirmation.
- Click 1 Save Private Key .
- Browse to the location where you want to save the private key.The private key is now saved in a text file on your computer.
Click 2 Save CSR .
The CSR is saved in a text file on your computer. It is this file that needs to be sent to your certificate provider.- Click Close to close the window.
Your private key and all required information are now saved on your computer. Now you need to send the saved CSR file to your certificate provider who normally will send you the final certificate in an email that should also contain download links to the root and intermediary certificates required for installing the SSL certificate on CM .