Integrating Key Vault with Integrated Certificate Authorities

Article
01/30/2024

Azure Key Vault allows you to easily provision, manage, and deploy digital certificates for your network and to enable secure communications for applications. A digital certificate is an electronic credential that establishes proof of identity in an electronic transaction.

Azure Key Vault has a trusted partnership with the following Certificate Authorities:

Azure Key Vault users can generate DigiCert/GlobalSign certificates directly from their key vaults. Key Vault's partnership ensures end-to-end certificate lifecycle management for certificates issued by DigiCert.

For more general information about certificates, see Azure Key Vault certificates.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you start.

Prerequisites

To complete the procedures in this article, you need to have:

A key vault. You can use an existing key vault or create one by completing the steps in one of these quickstarts:
An activated DigiCert CertCentral account. Sign up for your CertCentral account.
Administrator-level permissions in your accounts.

Before you begin

DigiCert

Make sure you have the following information from your DigiCert CertCentral account:

CertCentral account ID
Organization ID
API key
Account ID
Account Password

GlobalSign

Make sure you have the following information from your Global Sign account:

Account ID
Account Password
First Name of Administrator
Last Name of Administrator
E-mail of Administrator
Phone Number of Administrator

Add the certificate authority in Key Vault

After you gather the preceding information from your DigiCert CertCentral account, you can add DigiCert to the certificate authority list in the key vault.

Azure portal (DigiCert)

To add DigiCert certificate authority, go to the key vault you want to add it to.
On the Key Vault property page, select Certificates.
Select the Certificate Authorities tab:
Select Add:
Under Create a certificate authority, enter these values:
- Name: An identifiable issuer name. For example, DigiCertCA.
- Provider: DigiCert.
- Account ID: Your DigiCert CertCentral account ID.
- Account Password: The API key you generated in your DigiCert CertCentral account.
- Organization ID: The organization ID from your DigiCert CertCentral account.
Select Create.

DigicertCA is now in the certificate authority list.

Azure portal (GlobalSign)

To add GlobalSign certificate authority, go to the key vault you want to add it to.
On the Key Vault property page, select Certificates.
Select the Certificate Authorities tab:
Select Add:
Under Create a certificate authority, enter these values:
- Name: An identifiable issuer name. For example, GlobalSignCA.
- Provider: GlobalSign.
- Account ID: Your GlobalSign account ID.
- Account Password: Your GlobalSign account password.
- First Name of Administrator: The first name of administrator of the Global Sign account.
- Last Name of Administrator: The last name of administrator of the Global Sign account.
- E-mail of Administrator: The email of administrator of the Global Sign account.
- Phone number of Administrator: The phone number of administrator of the Global Sign account.
Select Create.

GlobalSignCA is now in the certificate authority list.

Azure PowerShell

You can use Azure PowerShell to create and manage Azure resources by using commands or scripts. Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through the Azure portal in a browser.

If you choose to install and use PowerShell locally, you need Azure AZ PowerShell module 1.0.0 or later to complete the procedures here. Type $PSVersionTable.PSVersion to determine the version. If you need to upgrade, see Install Azure AZ PowerShell module. If you're running PowerShell locally, you also need to run Connect-AzAccount to create a connection with Azure:

Connect-AzAccount

Create an Azure resource group by using New-AzResourceGroup. A resource group is a logical container into which Azure resources are deployed and managed.
```
New-AzResourceGroup -Name ContosoResourceGroup -Location EastUS
```
Create a key vault that has a unique name. Here, Contoso-Vaultname is the name for the key vault.
- Vault name: Contoso-Vaultname
- Resource group name: ContosoResourceGroup
- Location: EastUS
```
New-AzKeyVault -Name 'Contoso-Vaultname' -ResourceGroupName 'ContosoResourceGroup' -Location 'EastUS'
```

Define variables for the following values from your DigiCert CertCentral account:

Account ID
Organization ID
API Key

$accountId = "myDigiCertCertCentralAccountID"
$org = New-AzKeyVaultCertificateOrganizationDetail -Id OrganizationIDfromDigiCertAccount
$secureApiKey = ConvertTo-SecureString DigiCertCertCentralAPIKey -AsPlainText –Force

Set the issuer. Doing so will add Digicert as a certificate authority in the key vault. Learn more about the parameters.

Set-AzKeyVaultCertificateIssuer -VaultName "Contoso-Vaultname" -Name "TestIssuer01" -IssuerProvider DigiCert -AccountId $accountId -ApiKey $secureApiKey -OrganizationDetails $org -PassThru

Set the policy for the certificate and issuing certificate from DigiCert directly in Key Vault:

$Policy = New-AzKeyVaultCertificatePolicy -SecretContentType "application/x-pkcs12" -SubjectName "CN=contoso.com" -IssuerName "TestIssuer01" -ValidityInMonths 12 -RenewAtNumberOfDaysBeforeExpiry 60
Add-AzKeyVaultCertificate -VaultName "Contoso-Vaultname" -Name "ExampleCertificate" -CertificatePolicy $Policy

The certificate is now issued by DigiCert certificate authority in the specified key vault.

Troubleshoot

If the certificate issued is in disabled status in the Azure portal, view the certificate operation to review the DigiCert error message for the certificate:

Screenshot that shows the Certificate Operation tab.

Error message: "Please perform a merge to complete this certificate request."

Merge the CSR signed by the certificate authority to complete the request. For information about merging a CSR, see Create and merge a CSR.

For more information, see Certificate operations in the Key Vault REST API reference. For information on establishing permissions, see Vaults - Create or update and Vaults - Update access policy.