Certification authority (AD CS)
On Windows Server, you can deploy a certification authority on your company's intranet by installing the "Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)" role.
The creation of a certification authority in an intranet allows you to secure many services accessible only from your company's computers for free.
The advantages of deploying a certification authority include :
- price : no need to buy expensive SSL certificates from GeoTrust, Symantec SSL (Verisign), ...
- security : if the server where the certification authority is installed is well protected, you will be able to protect all communications in your local network thanks to the HTTPS protocol of each service (web server, RDS server, ...)
- certificate validity : generated certificates will come from a trusted certification authority (if client computers are configured correctly) and will not be self-signed. Knowing that self-signed certificates may be prohibited in some cases (especially for remote connections that allow you to access RemoteApps).
- only one configuration on the client side is required : you only need to import the certificate of your authority into the trust authority store of your client PCs for all your certificates to be considered valid.
- and more
