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 university verifies and guarantees the authenticity of the certificate.

The information for certificate holders, which you shpould familiarise yourself with, are unfortunately only available in German: https://www.pki.dfn.de/fileadmin/PKI/Info_Zertifikatinhaber.pdf
If you have a question about their content, contact us via IT Support (see contact box on the right).

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

Type in the search 'Wismar' and selct Hochschule Wismar.

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

Missing authorisation

If you receive the adjacent error message after logging in, you do not have the necessary authorisation to apply for a certificate. This usually means that your ID card has not yet been checked. To do this, please create a ticket at myoffice.hs-wismar.de with the request for ID verification. Alternatively, you can also have your ID checked by the Human Resources Department or your faculty administration.

Note: If you signed your employment contract after 01.07.2023 or have ever applied for a certificate before, you already have the authorisation. If you still receive the error message, please contact the ITSMZ viait-support@hs-wismar.de.

Filling out the form

Fill in the forms using the two screenshots:

Certificate Profile: GÉANT Personal email signing and encryption
Term: 730 days
Enrollment Method: Key Generation
Key Type: RSA-4096
Password*: Assign a password for the certificate (at least 8 characters long)
Password Confirmation: Repeat the password you have just assigned
Key protection algorithm: Secure AES256-SHA256
- Für Mac-User: Compatible TripleDES-SHA1

*Note: Please note that you must enter this password each time you send your first signed e-mail of the day, so make sure you remember this password. In addition, the certificate password must not be identical to the password of your central university account.

Submit and save certificate

After you have completed and submitted the form, you will receive a message that your certificate is being generated; this may take a moment, please do not close the page.

You will then receive a success message and your new certificate should be downloaded automatically by your browser.

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!