TERENA Certificate Service (TCS)

The TERENA Certificate Service (TCS) allows a variety of digital certificates to be offered to research and education institutions served by participating National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). These are provided by Comodo CA Limited, one of the largest worldwide Certification Authorities.

Five types of certificates are available:

  • Server Certificate - for authenticating servers and establishing secure sessions with end clients.
  • e-Science Server Certificate - for authenticating Grid hosts and services. These are IGTF compliant.
  • Personal Certificate - for identifying individual users and securing e-mail communications.
  • e-Science Personal Certificate - for identifying individual users accessing Grid services. These are IGTF compliant.
  • Code-signing Certificates - for authenticating software distributed over the Internet.

Comodo is also offering EV (Extended Validation) certificates to TCS customers for a discounted rate. EV certificates are issued after a more thorough vetting process than for other certificates and can be used to secure online financial transactions.

TCS takes advantage of a bulk purchasing arrangement whereby NRENs may issue unlimited numbers of certificates for a flat fee. Certificates may be obtained through NRENs that are TCS Participants.

Community Feedback on TCS

Vetting and issuing certificates works two to three times faster per certificate with TCS than with other products, especially because customers get fewer chances to make mistakes. In fact, it is vastly superior to commercial per-certificate services.

Customers are delighted because the enrollment screens simply make sense. The TCS certificates give me hard requester data and digitally signed emails without interference of misconfigured mail servers.
Teun Nijssen
Security Officer
Tilburg University


Running period: July 2009 - June 2012

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