Selecting a Digital Certificate Type and Slot

Important: While both Crescendo Key devices and Crescendo smart cards can be configured with PIV PKI certificates, only Crescendo Key devices can be configured for OTP generation.

  1. From the Home screen, select the desired Crescendo device. (Both Crescendo smart card and Crescendo Key devices support PIV PKI certificate management.):

  1. From the Applications screen, click the Configure Certificates link in the PIV section:

  1. On the Configure Digital Certificates screen, select the digital certificates that you want to configure from the combo box:

    The following types of digital certificates are available:

    • Authentication - Slot 9A

    • Digital Signature - Slot 9C

    • Key Management - Slot 9D

    • Key History 1 - Slot 82

    • Key History 2 - Slot 83

    • Key History 3 - Slot 84

    • Key History 4 - Slot 85

    • Key History 5 - Slot 86

    • Key History 6 - Slot 87

While a detailed explanation of PKI infrastructure and the related purposes of different certificate types are beyond the scope of this documentation, a brief overview of the functionality possible with digital PKI certificates is described at the start of Workflow 5: PIV Configuration: Configuring a Digital Certificate.

It is also important to understand that each certificate type can only be generated in its designated slot. For example, Authentication certificates can only be managed within the designated Authentication slot – in the case of Crescendo devices, this slot is labeled Slot 9A. This information may be needed when developing a wider PKI strategy, or designing a production PKI infrastructure within an organization.

Note:  Throughout this documentation, example digital PKI certificate operations are configured using only the Authentication certificate type. The other certificate types are configured in the same way and differ only in the specific slot they occupy on the device, and how a host device uses them for their designated purpose.