How to Request and Import a Signed Certificate from Thawte

Feature/Application:

This article provides a description of the process to request a webserver certificate and import the signed certificate from Thawte Inc.

Note: The screenshots shown here are of a trial SSL certificate.

Procedure:

• Login to the SonicWall Mangement GUI
• Navigate to the System > Certificates page.
• Click on the New Signing Request button and enter information about your organization.
• The Common Name (CN) field is the name that users will use to access the SonicWall UTM device. The screenshot below is only an example.

• Click on the Generate button to generate a CSR.
• Depending on the Subject Key Size the process may take between 3 seconds to 5 minutes. Refresh the page to see the Export Certificate button.
• Click on the Export Certificate button to export the CSR.
• Open the CSR in a text editor.

• Copy the CSR to submit to the CA. Paste the CSR contents from the clipboard into the ‘Certificate Signing Request’ box. For an example see screnshot below. Before clicking on Continue, set the Select server platform to Apache SSL. When you are ready, click on the ‘Continue’ button to move to the next step.

• On clicking on Continue, the Signed Certificate will be sent to the email address provided. The email may also contain the Root CA and any Intermediate CAs.  Save the certificate in PEM (.pem) or DER (.der or .cer) encoded format:

• Upload the Signed Certificate into the SonicWall. After successfully uploading it, the certificate may show as not validated until all the CA certificates in the chain are imported.

As you must have noticed, Validated shows No immediately after uploading the signed certificate. This is because the issuing CA certificates of the signed certificate have not been imported yet. After importing the CA certificates, the Validated column changes to Yes. Please refer this KB article for step by step instructions for validating a signed certificate: UTM: Imported Certificate is not validated

Sonicwall must be restarted after importing CA certificates.