About Certificates; Certificate Authorities And Signing Requests; About Certificates And The Firebox X Edge - Watchguard Firebox X15 User Manual

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Certificates

About certificates

When you use local authentication to connect to your Firebox over secure HTTP, the Firebox uses a certificate
to secure your session. You can also use certificates for VPN authentication.
Certificates are files that use a digital signature to match the identity of a person or organization with an
encryption key. Certificates use a security component called a key pair, which consists of two mathematically
related numbers. The user keeps one number, the private key, secret. The user can supply the other number,
known as the public key, to other users. The private key has the ability to unlock data that was encrypted using
the public key.

Certificate authorities and signing requests

To get a certificate, you place a private key in a certificate signing request (CSR) and send the CSR to a
certificate authority. A certificate authority (CA) is an organization or application that issues and revokes
certificates.

About certificates and the Firebox X Edge

You can import one Local Firebox X Edge certificate for local authentication, up to 25 Remote VPN Gateway
certificates (one per gateway), and up to 10 CA certificates. The certificates you import on the Firebox X Edge
are not included in a configuration backup. However, the distinguished names of the certificates selected for
VPN tunnels are saved.
You must import a certificate to make it active. If you plan to use a certificate for VPN authentication on an
existing tunnel, you must also change the VPN tunnel configuration to use the new certificate. No additional
configuration is necessary for CA certificates.
Local certificates must include an unencrypted private key in the certificate file to operate correctly.
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