Federation Manager Guide › Keys and Certificates for Secure Federated Communication › Import Trusted Certificates and Key/Certificate Pairs › Generate a New Certificate Signing Request

Generate a New Certificate Signing Request

A certificate signing request (CSR) is a message you can send to a Certificate Authority to apply for a digital identity certificate. After you create a private key you can generate a CSR. The CSR contains the public key.

You can generate a new CSR for a private key/certificate pair (self-signed or CA-signed). The private key always generates an identical CSR without modifying the existing private key. You may need to generate a new request for an existing private key for the following reasons:

• You no longer have the original request that Federation Manager generated when the private key/self-signed certificate pair.
• You need a new certificate for an expiring one, which requires a new copy of a CSR to submit to a Certificate Authority.

To generate a new CSR:

1. Begin at the View Certificates and Private Keys dialog.
2. Select Action, Generate CSR for the private key entry for which you want a new CSR.

   A file that conforms to the PKCS #10 specification is generated and Federation Manager prompts you to save the CSR.

3. Click Save.
4. (Optional) If you require a CA-signed certificate, contact a Certificate Authority and follow the procedure required by the Certificate Authority for submitting a request. Use the PKCS#10 file you saved in the previous step for the request.

After completing the certificate request process, the Certificate Authority issues a signed certificate response, which you import into the key database. Federation Manager replaces the existing certificate entry of the same alias with the newly imported certificate.