About Kaspersky Security Center certificates

Kaspersky Security Center uses the following types of certificates to enable a secure interaction between the application components:

• Administration Server certificate
• Web Server certificate
• Kaspersky Security Center Web Console certificate

By default, Kaspersky Security Center uses self-signed certificates (that is, issued by Kaspersky Security Center itself), but you can replace them with custom certificates to better meet the requirements of your organization's network and comply with the security standards. After Administration Server verifies whether a custom certificate meets all applicable requirements, this certificate assumes the same functional scope as a self-signed certificate. The only difference is that a custom certificate is not reissued automatically upon expiration. You replace certificates with custom ones by means of the klsetsrvcert utility or through the Administration Server properties section in Kaspersky Security Center Web Console, depending on the certificate type. When you use the klsetsrvcert utility, you need to specify a certificate type by using one of the following values:

• C—Common certificate for ports 13000 and 13291.
• CR—Common reserve certificate for ports 13000 and 13291.

The maximum validity period for any of the Administration Server certificates must be 397 days or less.

Administration Server certificates

An Administration Server certificate is required for the following purposes:

• Authentication of Administration Server when connecting to Kaspersky Security Center Web Console
• Secure interaction between Administration Server and Network Agent on managed devices
• Authentication when the primary Administration Servers are connected to secondary Administration Servers

The Administration Server certificate is created automatically during installation of the Administration Server component and it is stored in the /var/opt/kaspersky/klnagent_srv/1093/cert/ folder. You specify the Administration Server certificate when you create a response file to install Kaspersky Security Center Web Console. This certificate is called common ("C").

The Administration Server certificate is valid for 397 days. Kaspersky Security Center automatically generates a common reserve ("CR") certificate 90 days before the expiration of the common certificate. The common reserve certificate is subsequently used for seamless replacement of the Administration Server certificate. When the common certificate is about to expire, the common reserve certificate is used to maintain the connection with Network Agent instances installed on managed devices. With this purpose, the common reserve certificate automatically becomes the new common certificate 24 hours before the old common certificate expires.

The maximum validity period for any of the Administration Server certificates must be 397 days or less.

If necessary, you can assign a custom certificate for the Administration Server. For example, this may be necessary for better integration with the existing PKI of your enterprise or for custom configuration of the certificate fields. When replacing the certificate, all Network Agents that were previously connected to Administration Server through SSL will lose their connection and will return "Administration Server authentication error." To eliminate this error, you will have to restore the connection after the certificate replacement.

If the Administration Server certificate is lost, you must reinstall the Administration Server component, and then restore the data in order to recover it.

You can also back up the Administration Server certificate separately from other Administration Server settings in order to move Administration Server from one device to another without data loss.

Mobile certificates

A mobile certificate ("M") is required for authentication of the Administration Server on mobile devices. You specify the mobile certificate in the Administration Server properties.

Also, a mobile reserve ("MR") certificate exists: it is used for seamless replacement of the mobile certificate. Kaspersky Security Center automatically generates this certificate 60 days before the expiration of the common certificate. When the mobile certificate is about to expire, the mobile reserve certificate is used to maintain the connection with Network Agent instances installed on managed mobile devices. With this purpose, the mobile reserve certificate automatically becomes the new mobile certificate 24 hours before the old mobile certificate expires.

If the connection scenario requires the use of a client certificate on mobile devices (connection involving two-way SSL authentication), you can generate those certificates by means of the certificate authority for auto-generated user certificates ("MCA"). Also, in the Administration Server properties, you can specify custom client certificates issued by a different certification authority, while integration with the domain Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of your organization enables you to issue client certificates by means of your domain certification authority.

Web Server certificate

A special type of certificate is used by Web Server, a component of Kaspersky Security Center Administration Server. This certificate is required for publishing Network Agent installation packages that you subsequently download to managed devices. For this purpose, Web Server can use various certificates.

Web Server uses one of the following certificates, in order of priority:

1. Custom Web Server certificate that you specified manually by means of Kaspersky Security Center Web Console
2. Common Administration Server certificate ("C")

Kaspersky Security Center Web Console certificate

The Server of Kaspersky Security Center Web Console (hereinafter referred to as Web Console) has its own certificate. When you open a website, a browser verifies whether your connection is trusted. The Web Console certificate allows you to authenticate the Web Console and is used to encrypt traffic between a browser and the Web Console.

When you open the Web Console, the browser may inform you that the connection to the Web Console is not private and the Web Console certificate is invalid. This warning appears because the Web Console certificate is self-signed and automatically generated by Kaspersky Security Center. To remove this warning, you can do one of the following:

• Replace the Web Console certificate with a custom one (recommended option). Create a certificate that is trusted in your infrastructure and that meets the requirements for custom certificates.
• Add the Web Console certificate to the list of trusted browser certificates. We recommend that you use this option only if you cannot create a custom certificate.