Important Note: This service has been superseded by the Public Key Infrastructure project. Please refer to our PKI webpage for details.

Pilot Digital Certificate Service in HKUST

As a pilot test, ITSC is issuing digital certificates in our Intranet environment. Namely,  ITSC is operating a pilot certificate authority which issues digital certificates to all interested individuals in HKUST.  Departmental World Wide Web site administrator can also apply for server certificates to enable secure web browsing.

Currently, we only issue digital certificate to Netscape Communicator browser in which it supports certificate in both S/MIME for secure mail messaging and SSL client authentication.  You can get the own copy in SunSITE and follow step by step to install your certificate.  For Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, we are still working on it and will support it in the very near future.  Nevertheless, we provide interim instructions to transfer your certificate generated in Communicator to IE.

As an emerging new technology, the digital certificate will be enabling new applications in electronic commerce and network computing in general.  ITSC is providing this service as an experimental trial and let users experience the latest Internet security technology.  It is still subject to change and ITSC will be continuously revamping it.  So, any suggestion or feedback would be very much welcome.  A special-purpose mailing list called:

digitalid-list@ust.hk

is established to enhance idea sharing in this area.  Users are advised to join this mailing list for more information sharing.