A Certificate Signing Request (CSR) is an encoded file that provides you with a standardized way to send the relevant Certificate Authority (CA) your public key as well as some information that identifies your company and domain name – it is required prior to any installation of an SSL on a server.

When generating a CSR, the general information required will be:
– organization name
– location of the organization
– key type and size (the minimum is 2048-bit)
– the common name (EXAMPLE:www.example.com)

NOTE: If you are generating a CSR for a Wildcard SSL (for sub-domains) – the common name must start with an asterisk, which assumes any name excluding a dot-character (EXAMPLE:*example.com).

When configuring your SSL Certificates, the generated CSR will be required to be pasted into the order form.

Here are instructions for generating a CSR for these common platforms:

Apache Server (OpenSSL):  Apache Server   |   PFX Import/Export   |   Ubuntu Server with Apache2

Microsoft Exchange Server:  Exchange 2016   |   Exchange 2013   |   Exchange 2010

Microsoft IIS:  IIS 10   |   IIS 8/8.5   |   IIS 7

Microsoft Lync:  Lync 2013   |   Lync 2010

Tomcat Server (Keytool):  Tomcat Server   |   Java Based Server