Request S/MIME

Once you have the appropriate certificate credit on your organisation's Certificate Service account, you can proceed and request the required S/MIME email certificate, by clicking on the 'Request Certificate' tab in the JCS portal. The following steps apply:

Request Certificate

1. Is the certificate for a primary or secondary school? Note: S/MIME certificates are not available for school owned domains.

2. Select the S/MIME certificate type.

3. Choose duration between 1 and 3 years (there is no difference in cost!)

4. Download the S/MIME certificate order form.

5. Complete the S/MIME certificate order form with the users you wish to obtain an S/MIME for and upload it to the portal, and click 'Next.

6. On the Summary order page, tick the 'Confirm Request' to place the order.

7. Then click on 'Place Order'.

Optional:

8. You can review the information included in the certificate request by clicking on the 'Edit Order Information'.

Approve the Request

Before the bulk S/MIME Certificate Order can be processed a registered Management Contact at the organisation will need to approve the order.

When an S/MIME order is submitted, Management Contacts are sent an email notifying them that there is an order which requires their approval. The email advises the person to log in to the Jisc Community and then to go to their organisation's Certificate Service account by launching the Certificate Service portal

The Approver will need to navigate to the specific bulk Certificate Order by clicking on 'View S/MIME Orders' tab from the drop-down list in the portal.

Then click on the bulk Certificate Order to be taken to the order, where you have the option to approve all S/MIME requests in the order one by one.

Customer Manual Approval

Getting S/MIME Certificates

Once the S/MIME orders have been approved, the following steps will occur:

1. QuoVadis's system 'Trust Link' system will send an email to the 'Registrant Email' address specified against each requested S/MIME certificate.

2. The email from Trust Link will instruct the recipient to click on the link to initiate the creation of the S/MIME certificate. They will be asked to enter the 'Registrant Email' address and the shared password, set in the S/MIME order form.

3. Once successfully logged in, the user will be asked to set a strong password for the private key to the S/MIME certificate. They will also be asked to set a 'Challenge Question' for the purpose of retrieving the certificate password in case forgotten.

Note: Organisations can ask QuoVadis to retrieve the private key to an S/MIME certificate should they need to decrypt emails. For security reasons the S/MIME certificate will be revoked at that point so it cannot be used for fraudulent purposes.

4. Once the user has submitted the form, it will be sent for processing and followed shortly by another email from Trust Link with a link to where the user will be asked to log-in with the email address and new private key.