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IMPORTANT: Get your Digital Certificate Issued (Digital Certificate Enrollment Process)

Once you have paid for your Digital Certificate Order, your order becomes Active within the system. However, you need to complete the Certificate Enrollment Process, before the Certificate can be issued to you.

Note

  • You need to successfully Enroll your Digital Certificate within 5 days, since the date this Order became Active. In the event that you do not complete your Enrollment process within this period, your Digital Certificate Order will get automatically Cancelled and you would receive a refund.

  • A Digital Certificate will not be issued to:

    • a national or resident of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, North Korea, or Syria or any other country where such use is prohibited under United States export regulations, or

    • anyone on the United States Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the United States Commerce Department's Table of Denial Orders.

Follow the instructions mentioned below to get your Digital Certificate issued:

Step 1. Generate a Private Key and Certificate Signature Request (CSR) from your web server

Before you begin the process of obtaining a Certificate, you must generate a minimum of 2048-bit Private Key and CSR pair from your web server. 1

Step 2. Submit your Organization Details, Contact Details and Certificate Details to thawte

Before a Digital Certificate can be issued to you, we need to send a request to thawte with some information about yourself and your business. Follow the process mentioned below to request your Digital Certificate:

  1. Login to your Control Panel. 2

  2. Search for the Digital Certificate and proceed to the Order Details view. 3

  3. Click the Enroll Certificate link.

  4. Mention the following details and click the Enroll button:

    A. Organization Details

    • Provide complete details of your organization such as Organization Name, Address, City, Region, Zip, Country and Phone number.

    B. Contact Details

    • Admin Contact Details: Provide the Admin Contact details while giving special emphasis to the email address that you mention herein. You need to ensure that the email address mentioned herein, matches with the Administrative Contact Email Address as displayed in the Whois of the domain name. Please ensure that this information is not kept hidden for anonymity purposes, since the Digital Certificate would be sent to this email address.

    • Technical Contact Details: You need to ensure that the email address mentioned herein, matches with the Technical Contact Email Address as displayed in the Whois of the domain name. Please ensure that this information is not kept hidden for anonymity purposes, since the Digital Certificate would be sent to this email address.

      If the Admin Contact Email address matches that of the Technical Contact's, as per the Whois of the domain name, then you may simply select the available check box, to set the same details as the Admin Contact's.

    Note
    • If Privacy Protection is enabled for the domain name, it needs to be disabled before submitting the Contact details to thawte.

      Privacy Protection may be enabled again once the Certificate has been issued.

      Additional Information

      Enabling/disabling Privacy Protection

    • Until thawte verifies that both the email addresses match, you would not be issued your Digital Certificate.

    • In case of SGC SuperCert, Web Server and Wildcard Server Certificates, it is necessary to provide the real name of an individual in the Admin and Technical Contact Details. Otherwise, the Certificate would not be issued.

    C. Approver Email

    You need to select one of the following as the Approver Email Address:

    • Admin Contact Email Address: as mentioned in the Contact Details section above

    • Technical Contact Email Address: as mentioned in the Contact Details section above

    • A pre-determined email address on the domain name for which you are requesting the Certificate - You need to either select admin, administrator, hostmaster, webmaster or postmaster from the drop down list

      Note

      In case you are requesting a Digital Certificate for a sub-domain, select an email address on the appropriate domain/sub-domain from the drop-down menu. For example, if you are requesting a Digital Certificate for abc.yourdomainname.com, you may select a pre-determined email address on yourdomainname.com or abc.yourdomainname.com, depending on whether you have email accounts setup on the primary domain name or the sub-domain.

      You need to activate this email address before selecting the same here. A pre-determined email address with the domain name is recommended as the Approver Email Address.

    • support@geotrust.com: This option needs to be selected only in extreme conditions when none of the other email addresses can be used. If you select this option thawte would contact you and determine an alternate Approver Email Address. By selecting this option, your Certificate issuance could be delayed by several business days.

    thawte will send an email requesting review and approval, for the Certificate requested to the Approver Email Address specified.

    D. Certificate Details

    • Software Type: Select the Web Server software on which your website/domain name is hosted. The options available are IIS and Other.

      Note

      • If your website/domain name is hosted on Windows server, you need to choose the software type as IIS.

      • If your website/domain name is hosted on Linux server, you need to choose the software type as Other.

    • Certificate Signature Request: This is the CSR (Public Key) you have generated for the purpose of obtaining a Digital Certificate from thawte.

Step 3. Complete the thawte Authentication formalities

After you have enrolled for a Digital Certificate, thawte would contact you at the Approver Email Address specified and may request you to provide them with some documentation such as:

  • Proof of Organizational Name

  • Proof of Right to Use Domain Name

  • Proof of Organizational Telephone Number

Additional Information

Documentation needed by thawte before issuing you your Digital Certificate

Note

  • The above mentioned process is to be followed in case you have ordered an SGC SuperCert, Web Server Certificate or a Wildcard Server Certificate.

    In case you have ordered an SSL123 Certificate, once you have approved the Digital Certificate request email, thawte would try to automatically complete the Certificate enrollment.

  • If you do not complete your verification process soon, thawte may reject your Digital Certificate request and may send you an email informing you that your Digital Certificate has been Bogused / Rejected.

    However, should you subsequently complete the authentication formalities within 90 days of the Enrollment Date, thawte would issue you your Digital Certificate.

Once you have completed all these formalities, thawte will issue the Certificate and email you a confirmation.

Step 4. Check the Status of your Digital Certificate and retrieve your Digital Certificate

Once you have completed the enrollment process, thawte would begin verifying the data you have submitted to them and once satisfied, issue you your Digital Certificate. You can continue checking the status of your Digital Certificate request from your Control Panel and retrieve the same from your Control Panel itself. 4

  1. 1. Generating a Private Key and Certificate Signature Request (CSR) from your web server
  2. 2. Login instructions
  3. 3. Instructions for listing, searching and managing your Digital certificates Order
  4. 4. Checking the status of your Digital Certificate and retrieving the same upon issue