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SONICWALL SONICOS ENHANCED 2.5 ADMINISTRATOR’S GUIDE
195
VPN>CA Certificates
C
HAPTER
33
Chapter 33: Configuring VPN Certificates
VPN>CA Certificates
A digital certificate is an electronic means to verify identity by a trusted third party known as a
Certificate Authority (CA). X.509 v3 certificate standard is a specification to be used with
cryptographic certificates and allows you to define extensions which you can include with your
certificate. SonicWALL has implemented this standard in its third party certificate support.
You can use a certificate signed and verified by a third party CA to use with an IKE (Internet Key
Exchange VPN policy. IKE is an important part of IPSec VPN solutions, and it can use digital
certificates to authenticate peer devices before setting up SAs. Without digital certificates, VPN users
must authenticate by manually exchanging shared secrets or symmetric keys. Devices or clients
using digital signatures do not require configuration changes every time a new device or client is
added to the network.
A typical certificate consists of two sections: a data section and a signature section. The data section
typically contains information such as the version of X.509 supported by the certificate, a certificate
serial number, information, information about the user’s public key, the Distinguished Name (DN),
validation period for the certificate, optional information such as the target use of the certificate. The
signature section includes the cryptographic algorithm used by the issuing CA, and the CA digital
signature.
SonicWALL security appliances support third party certificates from the following two vendors of
Certificate Authority Certificates:
• VeriSign
• Entrust