Understanding certificates is something that I avoided for many years in my technology career. For many facets of IT, you never had to deal with them. That was for the networking guys, not anybody doing development or desktop support. Times have changed, and a solid understanding of the common certificate types is quickly becoming an ability that anyone in support should possess. More and more security is being focused around certificates and, with the exponential increase in the amount of applications that are served via the Web, understanding the certificates that protect these services is more important than ever.

Almost anyone who has set up a website has dealt with SSL certificates from a public Certification Authority (CA), but did you know that you can be your own CA? That you can issue certificates to the machines in your network right from your own CA server? Follow along as we explore some of the capabilities of Windows Server 2012 R2 running...