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 CATEGORY I 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.
See the Extended List of Category-I Data for examples of what constitutes Category-I data.
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.