CertAccord – The Genesis of a Simple Enrollment Solution for Linux
It comes as no surprise to anyone working with Microsoft products that the support and inclusion of operating systems other than Windows is often a second thought – if best. No where is this more prevalent than with Certificate Services – one of the most common questions during the design and deployment is “Well Mark, […]
PKI Insights Recap – Microsoft Intune Cloud PKI
We recently had the opportunity to revise and launch our monthly webinar series focused on PKI technologies. Our new program “PKI Insights” will be held each month and cover timely topics that are affecting enterprises around the world as it relates to PKI. Over the last many years, we have had a large amount of […]
Understanding Microsoft Cryptographic Service Providers
A common question I often get from customers and students is about Microsoft’s Cryptographic Service Providers (CSP). The CSPs are responsible for creating, storing and accessing cryptographic keys – the underpinnings of any certificate and PKI. These keys can be symmetric or asymmetric, RSA, Elliptical Key or a host of others such as DES, 3DES, […]
The mystery of “Valid existing certificate” setting in ADCS certificate templates – demystified
This is a follow-up of “Certificate renewal request is placed in pending state when Valid Existing Certificate is selected in certificate template” blog post and final nail into the subject. Let’s re-iterate the problem. ADCS Certificate Templates provide configuration for issuance requirements, which allows you to forcibly put request in pending state (no automatic issuance) […]
Web server certificate enrollment with SAN extension
As part of joining PKI Solutions, several blog posts from my old site are re-posted here for visibility and thoroughness. Many of windows administrators requires to setup SSL on their web servers and mostly they wish to use certificates with the Subject Alternative Name extension that allows to map a single certificate to a multiple […]
You cannot download CA certificate from web enrollment pages
As part of joining PKI Solutions, several blog posts from my old site are re-posted here for visibility and thoroughness. When you try to download CA certificate from web enrollment pages you get a prompt message with unreadable proposed file name: Do you want to save certnew_cer?ReqID=CACert&Renewal=1&Enc=bin (1,09 KB) from And when you press ‘Save’ […]
The Requested Template is not Supported by this CA (Error 0x80094800)
Today I was working with a customer and they mentioned they had just been contacted about an enrollment problem on one of their CAs. They had recently added a template to one of their Windows Server 2012 R2 CAs. The template had been in use for a long time and is present on their other […]
Creating a NDES Policy Module – A Programmers Guide
Microsoft introduced a great security improvement in Windows Server 2012 R2 to alter the standard Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES) security process. If you are familiar with the whitepaper I wrote for Microsoft (Securing and Hardening NDES) you’ll know I wrote about the disadvantages of using NDES for BYOD and Internet accessible enrollment solutions. The […]