Netscape Certificate Management System 6.01, Manual

Page: 18 / 377

Overview of Authentication Modules
18 Netscape Certificate Management System Plug-Ins Guide • May 2002
Overview of Authentication Modules
Certificate Management System supports both manual and automated certificate
issuance.
• In the manual method of certificate issuance, end entities supply most of the
information required by the server to formulate certificate requests and issue
certificates. Manual issuance is also dependent on human agents; it requires
that all end-entity certificate requests be approved by agents before the server
can process the requests. To understand the role of an agent in your PKI, see
section “Agents” in Chapter 13, Managing Privileged Users and Groups” of
CMS Installation and Setup Guide.
• In the automated method of certificate issuance, repositories, such as
directories, supply part of the end-entity information. End entities only supply
certain information—for example, a user ID and password—contained in the
repository during certificate enrollment. The server uses this information for
authenticating end entities before retrieving information required to formulate
the certificate request from the repository.
For details on the manual method of certificate issuance, see “Manual
Authentication” on page 21. For the automated method of certificate issuance,
Certificate Management System provides a set of plug-in modules. Plug-in
modules are implemented as Java classes and are registered in the CMS
authentication framework. The Authentication Plugin Registration tab of the CMS
window (see Figure 1-1) lists all the modules and the corresponding classes that are
currently registered with a CMS instance.
Figure 1-1 Default authentication modules for end-user enrollment