Netscape Certificate Management System 6.2, Administrator'S Manual

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How Certificate Management System Works
42 Netscape Certificate Management System Administrator’s Guide • June 2003
• Agents who can edit and approve requests.
• Auditors who can view and configure audit logs.
• Trusted Managers which are subsystems that have a trusted relationship with
another subsystem.
CMS allows you to create users, and assign them the privileges of whichever group
in which they are members. A user only has privileges for the instance of the
subsystem in which the user is created and the privileges of the group in which the
user is a member.
A configurable plug-in framework is provided to tailor authorization in your
deployment. You can change the default privileges of the groups that are
preconfigured by changing ACLs associated with those groups. You can create
new groups, assigning privileges to the group by adding them to ACLs defining
permissions. For example, you might create a special kind of administrator who is
able to run the basic operations of the subsystem, but is not able to configure any of
the features. See Chapter 8, “Authorization” for complete details.
Self Tests
CMS contains a new feature called Self Tests that performs certain tests of the
system that happen at startup and can also be manual started in the CMS console.
The tests then report results of the tests that you can view. You can configure which
test you want to run, and create customized tests. See “Self Tests,” on page 280 for
complete details.
Notifications
Notifications is a feature that allows you to set up automated messages when a
particular event occurs, such as when a certificate is issued, or revoked. See
Chapter 12, “Automated Notifications” for complete details.
Jobs
The Jobs feature allows you to set up automated jobs that run at defined intervals.
See Chapter 13, “Automated Jobs” for complete details.
About the Certificate Manager
The Certificate Manager subsystem provides the capability of a Certificate
Authority. It can issue, renew, revoke, and publish certificates as well as compiling
and publishing CRLs.