WebCA can be set up to load users from an existing directory or to accept ad hoc certificate requests from individual users. Using an easily navigated browser-based interface, WebCA administrators can add users in bulk, revoke and delete users, modify certificate properties, including certificate lifetimes and add and delete other administrators. Users that need certificates for their browsers interact with WebCA over the Worl Wide Web as well, via a page that lets them submit certificate requests to the site administrator. Unlike other products, WebCA uses its LDAP-based directory to ease the task of certificate distribution. Most CA packages respond to user requests for certificates with an e-mail message that has a link to a Web page.
Users go to the page to get certificates.
With WebCA, users instead can search and retrieve their certificates directly from an LDAP-based directory. The only knock against WebCA is it doesn't automatically grant certain certificate requests, a feature found in some competing products. Without that option, administrators must always approve certificate requests, which could cause a backlog at sites serving a large number of users. When looking at WebCA competitors, we found Xcert's Sentry CA Apache Stronghold 1.2 successfully debunks the on-going myth that installing software under Unix requires a Ph.D. in operating system internals. And its documentation, which eased installation, is excellent.