Certificate Services
Certificate Services, a service running on a Windows server operating system, receives requests for new digital certificates over transports such as RPC or HTTP. It checks each request against custom or site-specific policies, sets optional properties for a certificate to be issued, and issues the certificate. Certificate Services allows administrators to add elements to a certificate revocation list (CRL), and to publish signed CRLs on a regular basis.
Certificate services include programmable interfaces for creating support for additional transports, policies, and certificate properties and formats.
In Windows Server 2003, Certificate Services 2.0 can be installed from Control Panel by clicking Add or Remove Programs and then clicking Add/Remove Windows Components to install or uninstall Certificate Services.
Certificate Services concepts are detailed in the following sections. The content is intended to help you develop applications that will interact with Certificate Services.
| Content | Section |
|---|---|
| Description of the features of Certificate Services | Certificate Services Features |
| Overview of Certificate Services architecture | Certificate Services Architecture |
| Relationship between a certificate, the certificate's subject, and the subject's public key | Certificates and Public Keys |
| Information about the Certificate Request properties | Certificate Request Guidelines |
| Details of how a certificate is processed by Certificate Services | About Certificates |
| Description of the certification authority renewal process | Certification Authority Renewal |
The following additional useful topics are also included.
| Content | Section |
|---|---|
| Documentation on Certificate Enrollment Control, which provides services for creating certificate requests including requests for smart card users. | Certificate Enrollment Control |
| Documentation on the Microsoft Cryptographic Application Programming Interface, which provides cryptography-based security services. | Cryptography Essentials |
| Documentation on Smart Card, which provides services for developing and using smart card systems. | Smart Card |
| Name properties of certificates and certificate requests. | Name Properties |
| List and descriptions of X.509 certificate properties. | Certificate Properties |