You approve or ban a certificate in the context of a publisher. The certificate state is effective only within that publisher; if a certificate is used by multiple publishers, you must assign its state in each.

Approving or banning a certificate defines its Certificate State, which can be Approved, Banned, or Unapproved. The effective certificate state, called Certificate Global State, is what is applied to files signed by that certificate. A certificate’s Global State depends on the following: the Certificate State, the state of other certificates in its path, the Publisher State, and (for approvals) certificate configuration choices. See Certificate Global State to see how different Certificate Global States are produced.

Procedure

  1. Make sure you have set the appropriate Certificate Options on the System Administration Advanced Options tab. These determine which certificates may be used for approvals. See Determining Which Certificates Can Approve Files.
  2. Locate the certificate(s) you want to approve or ban, and then open the Publisher Details page for the publisher to which you want this approval or ban applied.
    Note: You may locate a certificate first and click on its publisher name (for example, from the File Details page, the Events page, or the Certificates table); or if you know the publisher for the certificate, open its details page directly.
  3. If the certificates for the publisher are not already showing, click on All Certificates for this Publisher.

    In the All Certificates for this Publisher panel, check the boxes next to any certificates you want to approve or ban. Note that all of the checked certificates must have the same state applied to them – that is, you cannot simultaneously approve some certificates and ban others.

    The Action menu with Approve Certificates selected on the All Certificates for this Publisher Image panel

  4. On the Action menu, choose Approve Certificates or Ban Certificates. The Certificate State of the checked certificates is changed to the state you selected.

    See Certificate Global State to see how a Certificate State of Approved, Unapproved, or Banned interacts with other states and rules to produce Certificate Global State.