Certificate Management Overview

Typically, users gain access to resources from an application or system on the basis of their username and password. You can also use certificates to authenticate and authorize sessions among various servers and users. Certificate-based authentication over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection is the most secure type of authentication. The certificates can be stored on a smart card, a USB token, or a computer’s hard drive.

Certificate Management manages the device certificates to authenticate Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL uses public-private key technology that requires a paired private key and an authentication certificate for providing the SSL service. SSL encrypts communication between your device and the Web browser with a session key negotiated by the SSL server certificate.

SSL proxy acts as an intermediary, performing SSL encryption and decryption between the client and the server. Better visibility into application usage can be made available when SSL forward proxy is enabled. SSL proxy relies on certificates and private-public key exchange pairs to provide the secure communication. Transport Layer Security (TLS) evolved from SSL, hence the terms TLS and SSL are sometimes used interchangeably in the document.