Do I need Windows to load certificates onto my PIVkey
card?
Yes, PIVKey is designed to use the Microsoft Minidriver interface to load certificates
and generate keys. PIVKey works with Windows Server 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2012R2
and 2016, and Windows versions 7, 8.0, 8.1, and 10.
See pivkey.zendesk.com for articles on Supported Card/Certificate
Management Systems and Certificate Authorities, Windows Certificate Authority set
up, and certificate management using the Microsoft Windows Certutil tool and the
PIVKey Admin Tools.
What do I need to issue smart card certificates?
To use the Microsoft Windows Certificate Authority, you?ll need:
- Microsoft Windows Server configured as a Domain Controller
- DNS server configured with the correct domain name
- Microsoft Windows Certificate Services in Enterprise mode
- An enrollment station PC joined to the domain with a smart card reader and
the PIVKey Admin Tools.
Other Card/Certificate Management Systems and Certificate Authorities can be used
if they support the use of the Windows Smart Card Base CSP. For workgroup or
standalone PCs, there are Single Sign-On applications that we can recommend to
enable smart card based logon without a domain or even a certificate authority. See
pivkey.zendesk.com for articles on each of these options.
What if I?m using Linux?
To use PIVKey on Linux systems requires the installation of PIV Middleware (and
CCID support if using PIVkey USB tokens). There is a wide variety of commercial
middleware packages available for PIV on Linux. In addition, there is an open source
package called OpenSC that supports PIV. OpenSC provides some tools, and most
importantly a PKCS11 library, that allows PIV cards to be used by applications like
Firefox and SSH. Please note that OpenSC supports PIVKey (and other PIV cards) in
Read Only mode. You cannot use OpenSC to write certificates to the card, only to
read and use certificates. See articles on pivkey.zendesk.com for more on
OpenSC Middleware and PIVKey on Linux.