iNews: General IST services and support

IST VeriSign certificate service

Mike Blasingame, IST–CCS

IST has purchased SSL certificates in bulk from VeriSign, at significant cost savings for the campus, and is administering the issuance of these certificates. Campus departments can now order new and renewal certificates for one or two years through this service. Instructions are available in PDF form at http://calnetpki.berkeley.edu/verisignsslcerts.pdf.

The benefits of using the IST service are:

• Cost savings. We get a significant discount based on number of certificates purchased. The more departments that participate, the higher the cost savings.

• Time savings. Certificates can be issued quickly.

• Flexibility. Multiple certificates (for clusters) and multiyear certificates can be issued easily.

• Recordkeeping. A list of campus certificates can be produced easily, without contacting VeriSign.

• Service continuity. Expiration dates can be tracked to make sure certificates do not expire unexpectedly.

• Testing. Certificates can be reissued as needed in development situations (e.g., for a recent project, we were able to reissue a certificate four times quickly).

Certificates are currently available for $180 per year per certificate, and can be set up for one or two years. This represents significant savings over the regular price of $349 per certificate per year.

Questions about the service can be addressed to

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