Fips-140 Compliance; Certificates - Sun Microsystems Netscape Enterprise Server Administrator's Manual

About Enterprise Server Security
cryptographic operations. For more information regarding how to enable SSL
for Enterprise Server, see "Configuring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)," on page 73
in Chapter 3, "Setting Administration Preferences."

FIPS-140 Compliance

You can configure Enterprise Server to be Federal Information Processing
Standards (FIPS)-140 compliant. To make your server FIPS-140 compliant, you
need to turn on the following two ciphers in your encryption preferences:
• (FIPS) DES with 56 bit encryption and SHA-1 message authentication
• (FIPS) Triple DES with 168 bit encryption and SHA-1 message
authentication
These ciphers are not available for Netscape Enterprise Servers exported to
countries outside of North America. You can set encryption preferences in the
Enterprise Administration Server by clicking the Preferences tab and the
Encryption Preferences link. You can also set the encryption preferences for an
instance of the Enterprise Server in the Server Manager by clicking the
Preferences tab and the Encryption Preferences link. For more information, see
"The Encryption Preferences Page," in the online help.

Certificates

Over the Internet and many extranets and intranets, identification can take
place with the aid of a certificate. A certificate consists of digital data that
specifies the name of an individual, company, or other entity and certifies that a
public key, which is also included in the certificate, belongs to that entity.
A certificate is issued and digitally signed by a Certificate Authority, or CA. A
CA can be a company that sells certificates over the Internet, or it can be a
department responsible for issuing certificates for your company's intranet or
extranet. You decide which CAs you trust enough to serve as verifiers of other
people's identities.
In addition to a public key and the name of the entity identified by the
certificate, a certificate also includes additional information, such as an
expiration date, the name of the CA that issued the certificate, and the "digital
signature" of the issuing CA. For more information regarding the content and
format of a certificate, see Managing Servers with Netscape Console.
Chapter 5, Working with Server Security 115