SSL dashboard

Citrix ADM now streamlines every aspect of certificate management for you. Through a single console, you can establish automated policies to ensure the right issuer, key strength, and correct algorithms, while keeping close tabs on certificates that are unused or soon to expire. To begin using Citrix ADM’s SSL dashboard and its functionalities, you must understand what an SSL certificate is and how you can use Citrix ADM to track your SSL certificates.

A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate, which is a part of any SSL transaction, is a digital data form (X509) that identifies a company (domain) or an individual. The certificate has a public key component that is visible to any client that wants to initiate a secure transaction with the server. The corresponding private key, which resides securely on the Citrix ADC appliance, is used to complete asymmetric key (or public key) encryption and decryption.

You can obtain an SSL certificate and key in either of the following ways:

• From an authorized certificate authority (CA)
• By generating a new SSL certificate and key on the Citrix ADC appliance

Citrix ADM provides a centralized view of SSL certificates installed across all managed Citrix ADC instances. On the SSL Dashboard, you can view graphs that help you track certificate issuers, key strengths, signature algorithms, expired or unused certificates and so on. You can also see the distribution of SSL protocols that are running on your virtual servers and the keys that are enabled on them.

You can also set up notifications to inform you when certificates are about to expire and include information about which Citrix ADC instances use those certificates.

You can link a Citrix ADC instance certificate to a CA certificate. However, make sure the certificates you link to the same CA certificate have the same source and the same issuer. After you have linked one or more certificates to a CA certificate, you can unlink them.

Note

You can also use a Venafi Trust Protection Platform server with Citrix ADM to automate the management of the entire lifecycle of SSL certificates. For more information, see Automate SSL certificate management.