Generate a Certificate
Table of Contents
Generate a Certificate
Palo Alto Networks firewalls and Panorama
use certificates to authenticate clients, servers, users, and devices
in several applications, including SSL/TLS decryption, Authentication
Portal, GlobalProtect, site-to-site IPSec VPN, and web interface access
to the firewall/Panorama. Generate certificates for each usage:
for details, see Keys
and Certificates.
To generate a certificate, you must
first Create
a Self-Signed Root CA Certificate or import one (Import
a Certificate and Private Key) to sign it. To use Online
Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for verifying certificate revocation
status, Configure
an OCSP Responder before generating the certificate.
- Select .If the firewall has more than one virtual system (vsys), select a Location (vsys or Shared) for the certificate.Click Generate.Select Local (default) as the Certificate Type unless you want to deploy SCEP certificates to GlobalProtect endpoints.Enter a Certificate Name. The name is case-sensitive and can have up to 63 characters on the firewall or up to 31 characters on Panorama. It must be unique and use only letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores.In the Common Name field, enter the FQDN (recommended) or IP address of the interface where you will configure the service that will use this certificate.If the firewall has more than one vsys and you want the certificate to be available to every vsys, select the Shared check box.In the Signed By field, select the root CA certificate that will issue the certificate.(Optional) Select whether to Block Private Key Export.Enable this setting to prevent the private key from being exported when you export the certificate.If you enable this setting, you must manually import the associated private key if you import the certificate to Panorama or to other firewalls. For firewalls managed by Panorama, the private key is required to successfully push configuration changes to managed firewalls that you imported the certificate to.(Optional) Select an OCSP Responder.For the key generation Algorithm, select RSA (default) or Elliptical Curve DSA (ECDSA). ECDSA is recommended for client browsers and operating systems that support it.Firewalls that run PAN-OS 6.1 and earlier releases will delete any ECDSA certificates that you push from Panorama™, and any RSA certificates signed by an ECDSA certificate authority (CA) will be invalid on those firewalls.You cannot use a hardware security module (HSM) to store ECDSA keys used for SSL/TLS decryption.Select the Number of Bits to define the certificate key length. Higher numbers are more secure but require more processing time.Select the Digest algorithm. From most to least secure, the options are: sha512, sha384, sha256 (default), sha1, and md5.Client certificates that are used when requesting firewall services that rely on TLSv1.2 (such as administrator access to the web interface) cannot have sha512 as a digest algorithm. The client certificates must use a lower digest algorithm (such as sha384) or you must limit the Max Version to TLSv1.1 when you Configure an SSL/TLS Service Profile for the firewall services.For the Expiration, enter the number of days (default is 365) for which the certificate is valid.(Optional) Add the Certificate Attributes to uniquely identify the firewall and the service that will use the certificate.If you add a Host Name (DNS name) attribute, it is a best practice for it to match the Common Name, because the host name populates the Subject Alternate Name (SAN) field of the certificate and some browsers require the SAN to specify the domains the certificate protects; in addition, the Host Name matching the Common Name is mandatory for GlobalProtect.Click Generate and, in the Device Certificates page, click the certificate Name.Regardless of the time zone on the firewall, it always displays the corresponding Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for certificate validity and expiration dates/times.Select the check boxes that correspond to the intended use of the certificate on the firewall.For example, if the firewall will use this certificate to secure forwarding of syslogs to an external syslog server, select the Certificate for Secure Syslog check box.Click OK and Commit.
