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Janet Certificate Service

Request for School Server Certificates:

Local authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia in England, Wales and Scotland, are able to request SSL Server Certificates for .sch.uk domains, through the Janet Certificate Service. These certificates are *free* for subscribers of the service.

 

Instructions for English, Welsh and Scottish local authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia

To request a server certificate on behalf of a school under your authority, please follow the steps below:

NB: The name and school number in the DNS whois record held at Nominet must exactly match that of the eduBase (or equivalent) record for the certificate request to be accepted.

 

  1. (1) The local authority or Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC) must be subscribing to the Janet Certificate Service, instructions can be found here.

  1. (2) The local authority or RBC then needs to send a request to the JANET Service Desk (tag@ja.net) to activate the 'schools facility' and request that the schools in their catchment area to the account. Please ensure you specify the three digit DfE LEA code for your local authority or a list of relevant SEED numbers.

  1. (3) Once we have activated the School facility on your account, you can log in to the online service portal and submit a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

  1. (4) If the CSR contains a .sch.uk domain, the Certificate Requester will be given the option of whom to send the authorisation email to at the school.

 

  1. NB: the CSR must contain a .sch.uk domain as the first Common Name to enable the school facility, however other Subject Alternative Names (SANs) are allowed, including non-.sch.uk domains, such as schoolname.co.uk.

  1. (5) In order to successfully process a certificate request on behalf of a school, the owner of the domain (the school) must give consent for the local authority or RBC to obtain a certificate on their behalf.

The school authorisation email will contain explanatory information and a link for the school to click on, to give their consent. The email will also state the email address of the certificate requester, as well as how to contact Janet if they are unsure of what to do.

To view a copy of the email being sent to the school, see here

Once the school provides the necessary permission, the certificate request will be processed. Certificates generally only take a couple of hours to be processed but can take up to 24 hours.

 

Nominet's whois: http://www.nominet.org.uk/other/whois/

EduBase records: http://www.education.gov.uk/edubase/

SEED records: School Details  

If you have any questions regarding this facility please contact the Janet Service Desk by sending an email to tag@ja.net.

 

Eligibility - Organisations with a Primary Connection to JANET; Local or Unitary Authorities connected to the National Education Network in England, or to the Scottish Schools Digital Network in Scotland, or to the Lifelong Learning Network in Wales, or to Classroom 2000 in Northern Ireland.


Single and Multi-domain SSLs available free of charge from the JANET Certificate Service (JCS).


Extended Validation certificates for financial transactions are available from Comodo at a discounted price for subscribers of JCS [more information]


Wildcard certificates are also available for a limited period free of charge to JANET customers [more information].


Contact Us: tag@ja.net