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Next-Gen Trust Security

Overview: certificate issuing templates

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Overview: certificate issuing templates

Certificate issuing templates define the certificate policies that are enforced whenever new certificates are issued.

An issuing template combines a CA account selection with certificate rules in a single place. When you create an issuing template, you define the rules that reflect your organization’s certificate security policies for requesting or renewing certificates.

Note: Issuing templates can be created or modified only by users with appropriate administrative permissions.

Here are some of the benefits of certificate issuing templates:

Enable consistent certificate requests by applying predefined security policies, so certificates are issued according to approved standards.
Speed up certificate issuance by requiring only the necessary input. All other settings are predefined or enforced by policy.

You can create as many issuing templates as needed, and edit or delete them at any time.

Most certificate issuing templates include at least the following settings:

Template name
CA account
Issuing rules
Additional fields that are specific to the selected CA account

Depending on the CA, additional settings may be required. For example, an issuing template for DigiCert includes a Product Option field.

What is the default issuing template? Next-Gen Trust Security includes a Default Issuing template that demonstrates how an issuing template is structured and how it connects to other parts of Next-Gen Trust Security. This template is intended for testing and evaluation only. The default issuing template is not intended for production use. For production environments, create your own issuing templates that reflect your organization’s certificate policies. Limiting use of the default template helps prevent unintended certificate issuance.

What's next

Learn how to set up a new certificate issuing template

Using a custom DNS provider

Creating a certificate issuing template