Who needs a Client Certificate (aka Digital Certificate)?

Individuals who process or work with sensitive data are the ideal candidates who should be using a client certificate to ensure that data when transmitted via email or other means is encrypted to prevent accidental disclosure.  These are high-level guidelines and provide only a broad outline of likely users. Consult with your desktop support staff or the Information Security Office if you have questions.

Examples:

• Researchers who have human subject information.
• Medical Staff who deal with HIPAA information.
• Faculty members who work with student information, aka FERPA.
• Any Faculty or Staff who wishes to email  data to their colleagues or others.
• When sending emails, you want to ensure that the recipients can verify that it was sent from you and your legitimate email account.

Digital Certificate Caveats

Important facts regarding Digital certificates:

• Available only to faculty and staff.   Student use may be considered in the future.
• Certificates are for use by individuals. Role-based certificates are not supported.
  This means that the name on a certificate is an individual name rather than a title, such as President, Provost, Professor, etc..
• These are for individual use and can not be used on a server.  Please see (DC) SSL Certificates.
• Certificates are not built into any Web or token-based authentication methods offered by ITS on campus at this time.