Certificate Manager console (certmgr.msc)

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Digital Certificates

A digital certificate is a means of proving the identity of a subject, such as a user, computer, or service.

• validity of each certificate is guaranteed by the issuing certification authority (CA)

The Certificate Manager console (certmgr.msc) shows which certificates have been installed and provides a mechanism for requesting and importing new certificates.

• manages certificates for the current user
• there is a computer certificate store, managed by certlm.msc
• third-party browsers usually maintain a separate store of personal certificates and trusted root CAs

Commonly Used Folders

• Personal folder stores the certificates that have been issued to the user account
  • used for authenticating to a network access server, encrypting data, and adding a digital signature to a document
• Trusted Root Certification Authorities contains a superset of the certificates of all issuers that are trusted.
  • includes Microsoft’s own CA root, local enterprise CAs, and third-party CAs
  • most of these are managed by Windows Update
• Third-party Root Certification Authorities contains trusted issuers from providers other than Microsoft or a local enterprise