This page covers digital server certificates.  If you are interested in obtaining a digital certificate for personal use (e.g., encrypting or signing e-mail), click here.

Quick Statistics

Requesting SSL Certificates for Servers

Requesting SSL Certificates for ITS-managed Domains or Servers

Requesting Extended Validation (EV) Certificates for Servers

Requesting New Domains (top-level or otherwise)

UT Austin has several thousand issued Digital Server Certificates and Personal Digital Certificates.

As December 03, 2010, UT Austin Information Security Office began a partnership with InCommon to start delegating SSL certificate creation to authorized departmental TSCs at no added cost.
Our InCommon license entitles the university to an unlimited number of SSL certificates. Department TSC managers can be provided with a Department Registration Authority Officer (DRAO) account to manage their SSL certificates.

The TSC manager for a respective campus department can send their request for a DRAO account to security@utexas.edu.
The request should include:

       Subject: InCommon DRAO Request

• Name of the Department
• Department Code for the Department (see https://utdirect.utexas.edu/dept if you don’t know it)
• Name, EID, and e-mail of the requesting TSC Manager

Please note that if you are interested in getting an SSL certificate for a server in the austin.utexas.edu domain or other ITS-managed domains (its, cc, etc.), the procedure is to e-mail the request to cert-requests@its.utexas.edu.

As of March 2012, the ISO successfully worked with UT Legal Affairs and was able to complete the paperwork to obtain Extended Validation (EV) certificates for servers.  More information describing what an EV certificate is and when it might be used can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Validation_Certificate.

If you already have an InCommon DRAO request setup, you can select the EV cert option during the certificate request process.

Please note that EV certificates can only have a maximum duration of 2-years (unlike 3-years for regular certificates).
Please also note that InCommon/Comodo requires the Chief Information Security Officer to speak with them via telephone prior to approving each EV certificate request.  As such, the turnaround time could be a bit slower than you are normally used to.

Please feel free to send any questions you might have to security@utexas.edu.

Campus units wanting to add new domains to their InCommon portfolio can generally self-provision these as needed. The ISO will need to approve them as they are requested.
Top-level domains (e.g., securityresearchiskewl.org) will require a few extra steps. Once the ISO has submitted a request for this top-level domain, InCommon will reach out to the registered WHOIS contact with a request that they add a simple DNS entry to demonstrate they are in command of the name space. Once this has been done, InCommon will approve the domain and certificates can start to be issued for it.

Please feel free to send any questions you might have to security@utexas.edu.