Request a personal certificate

All employees of Wismar University of Applied Sciences can apply for a personal certificate in order to:

encrypt emails (only the recipient can read the email)
sign emails (the recipient can ensure that the email comes from the sender and has not been changed)
digitally sign documents (internal documents approved for digital signature)
to authenticate at certain services

The ITSMC points out that the application for a personal user certificate and its storage may only be carried out using the personal user ID and only on an official device.

Apply for a certificate

Open the HS Wismar CA website and then click on Academic Login.

Select Hochschule Wismar or enter 'Wismar' in the search beforehand

Enter the user name and the corresponding password of your university account.

In the HARICA web portal, click on the menu icon at the top left to open the main menu.

Then click on Email to start the application for an email certificate.

Select Email-only as the type for the certificate by clicking on Select. No other options are currently available.

Your e-mail address is automatically entered for the certificate in the following window. Click on Next at the bottom.

Confirm the entries in the following window by clicking Next.

A summary of the certificate request is then displayed. Confirm the terms of use by ticking the box and send the certificate request by clicking Submit.

The certificate request will now appear on your dashboard. In the meantime, you have received an e-mail in which you must confirm your e-mail address once again. To do this, click on Confirm in the e-mail.

The link will take you back to the HARICA portal. Here you must confirm the cookies and log in again.

After registering, you must click Confirm again to confirm your e-mail address.

Note:

The processing of the certificate request by HARICA can take up to 15 minutes. If the requested certificate is displayed as Pending Certificates in the dashboard after logging in, please refresh the browser window after approx. 15 minutes. The application should then be displayed under Ready Certificates with the Enroll your Certificate action.

The requested certificate is then displayed in the HARICA Dashboard, which can be configured by clicking on Enroll your Certificate.

Select the following values in the input mask:

Algorithm: RSA
Key size: 4096

The password to be entered is used to protect your certificate file and is only known to you.

This is accepted by ticking the box.

The entries are confirmed by clicking on Enroll Certificate.

Finally, you can download your p12 certificate file via Download.

Note:

In this procedure, the private (secret) key is created on a HARICA server and continues to be stored there.

Further steps

Once you have downloaded the certificate, you can carry out the following steps:

Import the certificate into your operating system (e.g. to use our VPN or to digitally sign PDFs
Import the certificate into Group Office (for signing and encrypting e-mails)

The certificate issued is valid for 36 months and must be renewed thereafter. The user will be informed of this in advance by e-mail.

The personal user certificate may only be stored on official Wismar UAS devices and must be protected against access by third parties and against loss.

If the certificate is lost, it cannot be used to decrypt encrypted content. This also applies to expired certificates, so they should not be deleted carelessly!