SSL Certificates

Keep visitors to your school website secure by encrypting the information between your website and their computer

SSL Certificates

An essential part of many school websites, SSL certificates help to keep visitors to your school website secure by encrypting the information between your website and their computer.
Through our partnership with Janet, the UK’s HE and FE equivalent of SWGfL, we are pleased to be able to provide SSL certificates. At present we can only accept orders for an ‘Organisation Validated’ (OV) certificate for 2 Year durations in our partnership with the certificate authority.
Certificates cost £35 for the 2 years.

Please note that should 5 or more SANs be required in a certificate there will be an additional cost of £35 to complete your request (i.e one SSL certificate will be £70).

Follow the steps below to get your SSL Certificate from SWGfL started.

How to Order

Generate a CSR File

You'll need to create a .CSR file from the server where the certificate is to be installed and
- The public key needs to be 2048 bits
- The .CSR can have no local addresses included, only fully qualified domain names
- Multiple alternative names can be created for domain names hosted on the same server. These just need to be included when the CSR file is generated.
For example:

Common Name (CN)
mail.yourschool.sch.uk

Subject Alternative Names (SANs)
autodiscover.yourschool.sch.uk
fileserver.yourschool.sch.uk

You should also tell us at this stage how long you’d like the certificate(s) to be valid for (up to two years), and the platform you’d like the certificate(s) for (e.g. IIS 7).
Email the CSR File

Send the CSR file and PO to certificates@swgfl.org.uk
Receive Verification Email

A first stage verification e-mail will then be sent to any e-mail address you specify (usually the requester’s) at your school containing a hyperlink to click.
Validate the Domain

You will then be required to further validate the domain(s) using Domain Control Validation (DCV). The number of verification e-mails sent depends on the number of domains included on the certificate. verification e-mails will be sent to one of the following e-mail addresses of your choice
- hostmaster@your-school.sch.uk
- postmaster@your-school.sch.uk
- webmaster@your-school.sch.uk
- administrator@your-school.sch.uk
- admin@your-school.sch.uk
Install Certificate

Once verified we generate the certificate and send it to you. This can take up to 48 hours to process.

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