Enable ACME in Your Private PKI

EZCA The First ACME CA with ADCS Support

01 Dec 2022

How to Create A Private Certificate Authority (CA) with ACME Support

If you are looking at modernizing your private PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), you have probably considered automating SSL certificate lifecycle with ACME (Automatic Certificate Management Environment). This protocol is the most popular certificate issuance protocol, as it allows you to set and forget your SSL certificates. This means that once you create your SSL certificate, your client library (caddy, certbot, acme.sh, winacme, etc.) will take care of renewing and installing your certificate. This not only prevents costly outages caused by an expired certificate, but it also frees up your engineer’s time, allowing them to focus on other critical tasks.

EZCA is the only ACME Certificate Authority that can connect to your Existing Windows PKI This makes it easy to modernize your private PKI and automate SSL certificate lifecycle with ACME without the need to create a new CA. In addition to its ability to connect to your existing PKI, EZCA also offers a secure and compliant Certificate Authority in the cloud. EZCA uses industry best practices for all the complex components of a PKI including: Certificate Revocation List (CRL) publishing, Hardware Security Module (HSM) management and setup, geo-redundancy, cryptographic key selection, Authority Information Access (AIA) creation and maintenance, and more. This ensures that your CA is set up securely and compliantly, and is able to support your passwordless journey.

Using ACME with EZCA

EZCA offers an easy way to set up a secure ACME CA in minutes. You can create a secure cloud based CA in minutes, or modernize your ADCS CA by connecting to EZCA Once your CA is created, follow these steps to enable ACME certificate issuance in your private network

Here is a short video that demonstrates how to use ACME with EZCA:

Connecting Your Clients to Your New ACME CA

Once you have created your ACME CA, you are ready to start creating ACME Certificates. Since EZCA works with the native ACME protocol, any ACME client can request certificates from EZCA. See ACME Issuance Samples with EZCA

Common Challenges and Pitfalls When Setting Up a Private CA with ACME Support

Setting up a private CA with ACME support can be a complex process, and there are several challenges and pitfalls that you may encounter along the way. Here are some common issues to be aware of, and tips for overcoming them:

1) Ensuring secure and reliable communication between the ACME client and server: One of the key challenges when setting up a private ACME CA is ensuring that the server can validate domains in your private network. This requires careful configuration of network settings, firewalls, and other security measures.
2) Managing certificate revocation and renewal: With ACME, certificates are automatically renewed when they approach their expiration date. However, if a certificate is compromised or otherwise needs to be revoked, you will need to take steps to ensure that it is no longer trusted by clients. This requires careful management of certificate revocation lists (CRLs) and other aspects of the certificate lifecycle.
3) Ensuring compliance with regulatory and industry standards: Depending on your industry and location, you may be subject to various regulatory and industry standards that affect how you manage your CA and issue certificates. It is important to ensure that your ACME CA is set up in a way that meets these requirements, to avoid potential compliance issues.

To help overcome these challenges and ensure that your ACME CA is set up properly, it is recommended to work with a trusted provider like EZCA, who has experience in helping organizations set up and manage secure and compliant CAs.

Talk to PKI Experts

In this post, we have discussed how to use ACME with EZCA to create a private Certificate Authority (CA) with ACME support. We have also discussed the benefits of using ACME, and provided tips for overcoming common challenges and pitfalls when setting up an ACME CA.

If you would like to learn more or talk to a PKI expert about setting up your own ACME CA, you can Talk to a PKI expert for FREE. We are here to help you on your passwordless journey, and ensure that your CA is set up properly and securely.