Thawte Starter-PKI

thawte’s Starter-PKI (SPKI) Program enables businesses that require multiple certificates for their organization to acquire and manage these certificates in a manner that saves them considerable time, effort and money.

The Starter-PKI (SPKI) Program enables businesses that require multiple digital certificates to acquire these certificates in a manner that saves them considerable time, effort and money.

What does this mean?
It means that through thawte's Starter-PKI (SPKI) Program, you can be empowered to issue multiple SSL and Code Signing certificates for your organization, without the red tape normally associated with acquiring new certificates.

Is this appropriate for your business?
Well, quite simply, if you require more than three digital certificates per year, the SPKI Program will be beneficial to you.

Why is the Program beneficial?
It's about convenience. In addition to considerable savings, the SPKI Program allows you to take full control of all certification requirements in your organization. By undergoing a special vetting process upfront, you avoid the paperwork normally required for each new digital certificate. thawte's trusted root keys still sign your certificates, but they are authorized and approved by your own security personnel.

Types of certificates you can issue and manage using the thawte SPKI Program:

SGC SuperCerts:
Premium SSL certificates with automatic step up encryption.
Web server certificates that use special ‘step-up' technology to ensure that all communication is transmitted at 128-bit strong encryption.

SSL Web Server certificates:
Secure internet communication for data privacy.
Standard SSL digital certificates installed to assure your customers that they are not exposed to the risks of sending data over the Internet. These certificates are domain name specific.

Code Signing certificates
(Microsoft Authenticode, Microsoft VBA Macro Signing, Netscape Code Signing, Marimba, Apple File Signing, Java Soft):
Secure delivery of code and content to browsers.
Used to guarantee the publisher details and content integrity of downloadable code that you distribute.

What about thawte's trusted authentication and verification procedures?
These are not compromised in any way. thawte prides itself in being a truly trusted Certification Authority. The SPKI Program is based on pre-validation. Your account details and all the information you want your certificates to contain are checked upfront. If your certificate requests do not match the information in your account, they will be rejected automatically.

A Program that works for you
On joining the Program you will be allocated a dedicated account manager, who will be on hand to assist you with any issues that may arise. Full support is also offered through our team of highly experienced engineers on standby 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Some other features of the SPKI Program:

Cost effectiveness
By joining the SPKI Program you have the opportunity of receiving substantial reductions (starting at 25%) off the retail price of digital certificates.

Full control:
A user–friendly administration interface gives you complete control over requesting, editing, approving and terminating certificate requests.

Quick turnaround times:
You can expect to have a certificate issued within 30 minutes of a request (once your account has been approved) If your company has multiple domain or host names to secure, thawte's SPKI Program is the ideal solution to enable your digital padlocking without spending a fortune, and without compromising on authentication.

PKI – What is this?
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the entire system that supports the implementation and operation of a certificate-based public key cryptographic system.

benefits
In addition to gaining full control over your certificate management process and enjoying discounted prices, you will gain the following benefits when enrolling for the SPKI Program:

• All certificates and renewals are covered by a single account enrollment
• Accounts are re-authorized every 2 years for security purposes
• Total control over requesting, editing, approving and terminating of certificate requests
• A 30 minute turnaround for certificates (once the account has been set up)
• Elimination of repetitive paperwork
• A dedicated Account Manager
• The expertise of thawte's technical support team, twenty-four hours a day, five days a week.
• A user-friendly user administration system to manage your account

Additional new benefit
A major software vendor has released a beta version of their browser that will have automatic certificate revocation checking as a default option.

This new checking protocol will maximise the speed of checking the status of thawte certificates and will minimise the possibilities of online fraud as invalid certificates and companies will immediately be exposed to the end customer.

thawte has invested in a significant infrastructure to move from using the old Certificate Revocation List (CRL) to this new Online Certificate Status Protocol ( OCSP ), something not all CAs will be able to provide and support.

And… the all-important thawte firm handshake of trust
The benefit of thawte's authenticated and trusted digital signature on all your certificates cannot be over stated.

thawte is one of the original pioneers of the digital certificate industry. When we started signing digital certificates back in 1996, we realised that the essence of online security would come down to trust , and that only fully trusted Certification Authorities would survive the long term. This is the reputation that we have cultivated over the years… a fully trusted Certification Authority.

Low cost, high credibility
Having had the benefit of being a first-mover and industry leader, thawte has developed a highly efficient infrastructure that allows us to fully authenticate certificates without transferring the extra costs normally associated with this comprehensive process to the cost of the certificates themselves.

A fully authenticated thawte certificate will always guarantee that:

• the organization named in the certificate has the right to use the domain name included in the certificate
• is a legal entity ; AND
• that the individual who requested the SSL certificate on behalf of the organization was authorized to do so.

Hence, we have been able to keep the cost of our certificates competitive, without compromising on the all-important trust factor.

The process of joining the SPKI Program:

1. Acceptance into the program is based on pre-approval. You enroll online for the thawte SPKI Program by submitting all your company documents and details to us for a vetting process. These details and all the information you want your certificates to contain are checked up-front.
2. Once we have validated all your details using the highly trusted thawte authentication and verification process, your account is approved and you will be able to issue certificates to all the domains validated in your account without any further interaction with thawte.
3. You administer your account from your desktop with a standard web browser. Along with being able to manage SSL Web Server certificates, Code Signing certificates and SGC SuperCerts, you will be able to add funds and security personnel into your account. Through this interface, you can also manage your organizational structure by adding departments and new companies as the need arises, while also requesting approval for new domains.
4. Allocated Security personnel will be able to submit a certificate request. Your appointed security officer within your organization will be notified of the pending request, and will be able to issue the certificate, reject the request, or edit it to conform to your pre-approved details.

who should join?
thawte's SPKI Program is highly recommended for any company requiring more than three digital certificates per year.

How to know if you will need more than 3 certificates per year

SSL Web Server certificates and SGC SuperCerts
If you want to assure customers that they are not exposed to the risks of sending data over the Internet you will need an SSL Web Server certificate or an SGC SuperCert. If you have more than one domain to secure in this manner, then you should have more than one SSL Web Server certificate or SGC SuperCert.

Code Signing certificates
Secure delivery of code and content to browsers. You require a Code Signing certificate if you need to guarantee the publisher details and content integrity of downloadable code that you distribute. You may require more than one Code Signing certificate if you distribute a number of different applications that use a variety of platforms.

What can the SPKI program do for you?
The SPKI Program (SPKI) empowers you to issue multiple SSL and Code Signing certificates within your organization, by means of self-service.

What is pre-approval?
Pre-approval is a crucial element of the program. For all certificate types that are included in the program, pre-validated templates are created against which individual certificate requests are matched. The system will only allow you to approve certificates that match these templates. Within that range, however, you are free to approve certificates containing whatever information you wish (e.g. host names, org units).

What is included in the program?
The program covers thawte SSL Web Server certificates, SGC SuperCerts and Code Signing certificates. It handles certificate approval, revocation and renewal. The program also keeps records of all your ongoing certificate information and financial tracking for reporting and accounting purposes.

Additional features include:
• 3 granular levels of security settings for personnel
• Easy editing of user profiles
• Add extra domains to your organisational profile at no extra cost