The global infrastructure for research is a federated system: with just one credential you can access a range of services from global providers, provided that you are given usage rights to them. No more separate passwords, but just a single source of your identity.
However, your Nikhef credential or certificate in itself does not give you any access rights per se: for that you will also need authorization for your favourite services. Think of your certificate as a passport, with any authorization sthen given in the form of additional visa, linked to it.
Web-based services
As a Nikhef user, you can use your institutional (“NikIdM”) identity to directly authenticate to web-based services. Examples you find on the Nikhef SSO pages. For non-web services, you will need a certificate to authenticate (make your identity known) to services, hosts and other users in the e-Infrastructure. With your certificate, you can set up secure internet connections, sign your electronic messages, and prove your identity to web and grid sites.
Instant Trusted Certificate Services
Nikhef participates in the GEANT Trusted Certificate Service, which provides an easy and quick way to get certificates that are suitable for use in national and global e-Infrastructures, and work with all major research collaborations.
This service is provided to qualified users (employees and most of the students) of all Dutch research and academic institutions through SURF. As an end-user you can obtain pesonal and personal software agent certificates from this service directly. ICT staff and service operators can also get server certificates for combined public web trust and e-Infrastructure use from TCS via their institutional IT department.
- Step by step guide to getting your certificate
- Get your certificate immediately (logs you in to the TCS service operated by Sectigo)
In some cases, users collaborate with Nikhef but are not officially employees. In that case, please select your own home organisation, or select it from the drop-down box. If you are not from the Netherlands, use a link appropriate from the TCS membership page.
Legacy DutchGrid CA
If all this fails, the legacy DutchGrid CA is still available. The processing time for requests is one week (TCS requests are processed within seconds).