LSU A&M in Baton Rouge is faced with many of the same IT security challenges as other peer institutions in higher education. For example, concerns about safeguarding student information, protecting against malicious users, and providing a safe campus computing environment must be balanced against the concept of academic openness and having a diverse set of users and needs on campus. There are many IT security tools that can assist institutions like LSU in achieving their goals and one of them is the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). A PKI provides LSU with a flexible, extensible foundation that it can leverage to solve many IT security problems. In April of 2006 LSU A&M in Baton Rouge began evaluating technical architectures for its PKI. The model that we chose uses a certificate authority (CA) running locally in our computing center, but one that issues certificates that are globally trusted across the internet. This global trust comes from a newly entered-into contract with Cybertrust, which certifies our CA and allows it to chain through their globally trusted root. 

What is a PKI?
A Public Key Infrastructure is an enabling, foundational technology that allows organizations to build security solutions that leverage a common trust. The PKI provides an organization with the facility to create, distribute, and manage keys used by computers and users. These keys can be used for business functions such as sending secure e-mail, encrypting data on disks to protect against loss or theft, and securing communications, such as with virtual private networks (VPNs). The PKI approach separates the management of the keys from their use, allowing an organization to leverage the infrastructure for a variety of different uses that would otherwise require separate infrastructure components. Because of this, the PKI can help organizations operate more securely and at lower costs over the long term.

To request a certificate please visit the PKI Self Service Portal.