Installing a Certificate for use with IIS

In order to make use of the certificate in IIS, it will need to be assigned to a website.

To install the certificate with IIS

1.Start the Internet Services Manager from the Windows Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/ menu.

2.Highlight the “Default Web Site” entry, and right-click to open a context menu. Select Properties. The default web site properties dialog opens. Select the Directory Security Tab.

3.Click on the Server Certificate button. This will start the IIS Certificate Wizard.

4.Depending on how the certificate was generated, the IIS Certificate Wizard will prompt for the following:

If there is an outstanding certificate request

The IIS Certificate Wizard will inform the user that there is a pending certificate request.

1.When prompted, choose “Process the pending request and install the certificate”.

2.Continue to follow the on-screen prompts until the certificate is installed.

If there is no outstanding certificate request

The IIS Certificate Wizard will prompt the user to assign a certificate using one of three possible methods.

1.Choose “Assign an existing certificate” from the available options and press Next to continue.

The example below shows that three certificates are currently installed.

The first listing is a self-signed certificate, created using the createcert utility. Note that the “Issued To” and “Issued By” fields are the same. If you decide to install this type of certificate, you will receive a “Security Alert” when trying to access the web site using Microsoft Internet Explorer. When using self-signed certificates, you will not be able to acquire a secure connection using Netscape 6.0.

The second listing in the example is a certificate generated using Microsoft CA. Note that in this case the “Issued To” and “Issued By” fields reflect that this is not a self-signed certificate.

The last listing in the example dialog is the Microsoft CA certificate used to sign certificate requests. This certificate appears in the list because the CA was set up on the same machine as the one being configured.

2.Select the certificate you wish to install and press Next to proceed with the certificate installation.

This concludes the certificate installation for IIS, and SSL connections can now be made to the default web site.