Certification Authority (CA) of the University of Münster

The CA supplies members and organizational units of the University of Münster and the Academy Of Fine Arts Münster with cryptographic certificates.

These certificates are a core component of digital IDs that can be used by people, groups and servers to identify themselves.

Main use area of the issued certificates is the protection of communication in the internet: Electronic signing and encrypting of emails, identity check of persons as well as servers, authenticity check of software, and much more.

The CA operates in the context of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of the German Research Network Association (DFN-Verein) in support of science, research, and teaching.

What can the CA do for you?

Regardless of whether you want to start with a fresh key pair or you have already prepared a certification request: With our web pages you can request your new X.509 certificate with just a few mouse clicks:

Server certificates

Such certificates are used to identify themselves mainly by WWW servers with addresses starting with https:// in place of http://, but also by email servers and other servers to which you can establish an encrypted connection secured with Transport Level Security (TLS, formerly SSL).

Person certificates

Such certificates are issued to natural persons and used mainly for electronic signing and encrypting emails with S/MIME, but also to identify oneself to WWW applications, to computers, to other access control systems, and much more. All modern email programs support S/MIME.

Group certificates

Such certificates do not belong to a natural person but to a certain group of persons and are often used for email addresses of institutes and similar purposes.

Functionary certificates

Such certificates belong to a natural person in performance of his duties as an official or functionary, e. g. to a dean, and are passed to the successor when leaving.

Software developer certificates

Such certificates are person or group certificates used not for emails or electronic identification but for electronical signing of software, to allow for an automatic authenticity check when installing the software.

Smartcard logon certificates

Such certificates are person certificates used not for emails but on a smartcard or a cryptotoken as an electronic identification for logging on to a Windows computer in an Active Directory domain.

Of course we advise you on all questions regarding the use of cryptography and certificates.

Certificates are issued according to the X.509 standard. Electronic signatures created with them are “advanced electronic signatures“ as per eIDAS regulation of the European Union.