Creating a PEM application object

To enable Trust Protection Foundation to manage PEM certificates, you must configure the PEM application object. This object provides the information Trust Protection Foundation needs to monitor, enroll, or provision PEM files on its associated servers, and can even provision the end-entity, chain and—as of Trust Protection Foundation version 18.3— private key to a single file (rather than two or three separate files).

BEST PRACTICE Consider managing object settings using a policy. For more information, see Managing applications using policies.

DID YOU KNOW? When you add an installation to a certificate, you'll have the option of defining (and editing) this object during that process, which means that you don't have to log in to Policy Tree as the following procedure describes. And because the settings are the same, you can use this topic for information about each setting.

For more information, see Creating a certificate installation.

To create and configure a PEM application object

From the Certificate Manager - Self-Hosted menu bar, click Policy tree.
In the Policy tree, select the device object to which you want to add the new application object, and then click Add > Application, and then select PEM.
When the new application object page appears, then under Status, clear the Processing Disabled checkbox.

When checked, this option disables provisioning of the certificates installed on the current application. This means that Trust Protection Foundation does not attempt to install, renew, process, or validate certificates on the application.
(Optional) In the Device Certificate box, click to select and associate a certificate with the new application.

NOTE If you don't have a certificate ready, you can do this later or you can do it on the certificate's Association tab.

To associate a certificate with the current application, you must have write permissions to the application object and either write or associate permissions to the certificate object.

For detailed information on associating a certificate with an application, see Associating a certificate with an application object.
Under General, do the following:
1. In the Application Name field, type a name for the new application.
2. (Optional) In the Description field, type a description for the purpose of the application.
  
  A strong description can help to provide context for other administrators who might need to manage the new application.
3. In the Contacts field, select user or group identities you want assigned to this application object (or choose the Use policy value to configure contacts using a policy).
  
  Default system notifications are sent to the contact identities. The default contact is the master administrator.
  
  TIP If the Identity Selector dialog is not populated when it first opens, enter a search query to retrieve the Identity list. The administration console does not automatically display external users and groups. You must first enter a search string so Trust Protection Foundation can query the external Identity store, then return the list of requested users or groups. If you want to display all user or group entries, enter the wildcard character (*).
  
  Press Shift+click to select multiple, contiguous users and groups. Press Ctrl+click to select multiple, discontiguous users and groups.
4. In the Approvers field, select user or group Identities you want to assign to approve workflows (certificate approval or injection command) for the new application.
  
  The default approver is the master administrator. For more information on defining workflow objects, see Implementing certificate workflow management.
5. (Conditional) If your application (or certificate) object is affected by a defined workflow and you want users to use a console other than Policy Tree, click Managed By and select which administration console to use as part of the workflow.
  
  You only need to configure this if you are using workflows and expect users to perform a task using a particular administration console. The default setting is Policy Tree.
  
  For more information, see Specify folders and certificates to be managed by Certificate Manager - Self-Hosted .
Under Application Information, do the following:
1. Click next to Application Credential to browse for the credential object that you want to use to authenticate with the application.
  
  DID YOU KNOW? Credential objects store the credentials Trust Protection Foundation uses to authenticate with devices, applications, and CAs. The stored credential might be a user name or private key credential; some drivers—such as F5, which is not SSH-based—can only use the user name credential for authentication.
  
  NOTE The user account you select must have Read and Write access to the Temporary, Private Key, and Certificate directories.
  
  For more information, see Working with system credentials.
  
  DID YOU KNOW? The Connection Method is the protocol that Trust Protection Foundation uses to connect to the server and manage the certificates installed on that server. In an application object's settings, this field is typically read-only.
2. Click the Connection Method list, click the protocol to use—HTTPS or SSH—and then in the Port field, specify the associated port number.
3. (Optional) In the Port field, type the port that Trust Protection Foundation should use to communicate with the server where the application is installed.
  
  Trust Protection Foundation uses the SSH protocol to communicate with the application server installed on Linux or Windows. The default SSH port assignment is port 22.

Complete the PEM application settings by referring to the following table:

Field	Policy	Description
PEM Settings		The following are server-specific certificate settings. They are referenced only when you associate a certificate with the current PEM Application object.
Private Key File		The path and filename where Directory Certificate Manager - Self-Hosted installs the private key. This setting must match the PEM application’s private key file configuration. For more information, refer to your PEM documentation.
Private Key Credential		The credential required to access the private key file for certificate renewal. To select a private key password credential Click to open the Credential Selector dialog. Select the credential required to access the private key file for certificate renewal, and then click Select. For more information, see Working with system credentials. Trust Protection Foundation does not include the private key password on the command line when performing key management operations. Instead, it provides the password when prompted.
Private Key PBE Algorithm		The Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.0 (PBES2) algorithm. Each algorithm type has a corresponding security/compatibility value. Generally they are inversely related due to their adoption by software applications.
Private Key Syntax		The format specification for the private key. Existing PEM objects default to OpenSSL (PKCS#1). When creating a new object, the default is PKCS#8. OpenSSL is only allowed when the Private Key PBE Algorithm is set to SHA1/3DES Insecure but better system compatibility or SHA256/AES256 high security but low system compatibility. NOTE ECC remote generation support requires an OpenSSL version 1.0.2 or higher installed on the target device
Certificate File		The path and filename on the PEM application server where Trust Protection Foundation installs the certificate. This setting must match the PEM application’s certificate file configuration. For more information, refer to your PEM documentation. DID YOU KNOW? If you want to provision the end-entity, chain and private key to a single file (rather than two or three separate files), then specify the same path and filename for the Certificate File and Certificate Chain File settings, and/or Private Key File settings on the application object.
Certificate Chain File		The path and filename on the PEM application server where Trust Protection Foundation writes root certificates. This setting must match the PEM application’s certificate chain file configuration. For more information, refer to your PEM documentation.
Overwrite Existing Chain		Overwrites the existing certificate chain file when Trust Protection Foundation installs a new certificate and private key.

(Optional) Under File Ownership and Permissions, select Yes on the Set Owner and Permissions after Provisioning Files drop-down—if you want to set specific permissions and ownership on files after they have been provisioned by Trust Protection Foundation—and then do the following:
1. In the Owner field, type the user account name of the user who should have access to the provisioned files.
  BEST PRACTICE Who you assign as owners and approvers of your certificates is an important part of your PKI strategy. This is especially true because employees continue to pose the greatest threat to securing trust. Typically, this is because many employees fail to follow security best practices.
2. From the Owner Permissions list, select the level of permissions you want to grant to the owner (Read, or Read and Write).
3. In the Group field, type the group name to which the owner belongs.
4. From the Group Permissions list, select the level of permissions you want to grant to that group (None, Read, or Read and Write).

When you are finished, click Save.

What's next?

After you've created an application object, here are other things you can do to manage the new application:

On the application's Settings sub-tab:
- Click to push a certificate to its associated application.
  
  For more information, see Pushing a certificate and private key to an application .
- Click Reset to stop processing the application and reset the status and stage.
- Click to reattempt installation of the certificate to its associated application, .
- Click Validate Now to validate the applications associated certificate.
  
  Validation requests are placed into a queue. When your validation runs, the application and its associated certificate are scanned according to the settings configured in the application object’s Validation tab.
  
  For more information, see About certificate and application validation.
On the application object's Validation tab, you can configure validation settings for the application object.
On an object's General tab:
- Click the Log sub-tab to view any events that are triggered by the template object.
- Click the Permissions sub-tab to configure the users or groups to whom you want to grant permissions to the new object. For more information, see Permissions overview.