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What is a certificate Why is it needed to have certificates on our computers?
A certificate or digital certificate is a unique, digitally signed document which authoritatively identifies the identity of an individual or organization. Using public key cryptography, its authenticity can be verified to ensure that the software or website you are using is legitimate.
What are user certificates used for?
User Certificate-Based Authentication Certificates can be used to perform many functions, including authentication. A certificate can be used to represent a user’s digital identity. In most cases, a user certificate is mapped back to a user account. Access control will then be based on this user account.
What is machine certificate authentication?
Also known as computer certificates, machine certificates (as the name implies) give the system—instead of the user—the ability to do something out of the ordinary. The main purpose for machine certificates is authentication, both client-side and server-side.
Where are local machine and current user certificate stores?
Local Machine and Current User Certificate Stores. Each of the system certificate stores has the following types: This type of certificate store is local to the computer and is global to all users on the computer. This certificate store is located in the registry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE root.
Can a certificate be stored in Windows certificate manager?
If you intend for a certificate to be used by a single user, then a user certificate store inside the Windows certificate manager is ideal. This is the common use case for certificate-based authentication processes such as wired IEEE 802.1x.
Why are user certificates less convenient to use?
You’ve already discovered some reasons why using user certificates are less convenient: you had to create a custom template, make sure that the AD didn’t allow users to join non-company machines to the domain, and make sure that the certificate authority didn’t have the plug-in that allows non-domain machines to request user certificates.
Can a user certificate be issued on a computer?
The suggested solution was to issue a User certificate instead. Now by default, the template for User certs allows them to be exported, so we made a custom template that does not allow for export. Every guide you read for distributing internal certs for this kind of setup uses computer certs, but the question is why?