Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) at LSU: General Information

The following article gives a brief overview of LSU's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system.

What is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)?

A PKI is a secure method for exchanging information over the Web. PKI's use a public and/or private key to encrypt IDs, documents, or messages. It starts with a Certificate Authority (CA), which issues digital certificates to users within the system. Digital certificates then allow the authentication of people and organizations over a public system (such as LSU's intranet, e-mail servers, and campus-based Web servers).
 

LSU's Public Key Infrastructure system

Here at LSU, the PKI system provides many valuable, no fee services to the LSU community such as: SSL certificates for web servers. ITS has negotiated a contract with InCommon(incommon.org) so that we can provide LSU users with certificates that will be implicitly trusted across the internet.

How does the LSU PKI work?

For SSL certificate,  an administrator generates a Certificate Signing Request(CSR) and upload it to our server at https://pki.its.lsu.edu.  Our system then forwards the CSR to InCommon to get it signed, and the admin can then download the signed certificate at the PKI website.  Please allow 24 to 48 hours for InCommon to sign the certificate. 
 

Where can I get certificates?

For more on obtaining certificates, click here to go to the LSU Public Key Infrastructure Website.

Note: You must be on-campus or connected to the LSU VPN to access the PKI website.