[Fed-Talk] DoD ECA Certificates - Hardware vs Software with the Mac
[Fed-Talk] DoD ECA Certificates - Hardware vs Software with the Mac
- Subject: [Fed-Talk] DoD ECA Certificates - Hardware vs Software with the Mac
- From: Bob Colbert <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 09:38:40 -0400
- Acceptlanguage: en-US
- Thread-topic: DoD ECA Certificates - Hardware vs Software with the Mac
Title: DoD ECA Certificates - Hardware vs Software with the Mac
I am getting closer to understanding the certificates and Mac however I am still a little short on some of these topics. However this list has proved invaluable in helping understand these things. Usually, it is the initial setup that is difficult and the day-to-day usage of things that (hopefully) become trivial.
Particulary, I am trying to understand the ECA certificate program for DoD contractors. I currently have a “software” certificate. I was looking to convert it to either USB or SmartCard. The ECA program defines this as Medium Hardware Assurance or Token Hardware Assurance. The Medium one is supposedly the ECA equivalent of a CAC card, however I havent had any problems thus far just using my software certificates. But I really don’t fully understand the technical/everyday usage difference between Medium Hardware vs Token Hardware levels.
While contacting one of the 3 vendors approved for ECA certificate issuance, it was brought up that there is a “middleware” client required for use with either a USB-based or SmartCard device for either Medium Hardware or Token Hardware levels. I believe the client is ActivClient. I am not sure if this middleware is required for all 3 vendors or just this one and is the middleware client the same for all three vendors.
My basic questions about the middleware are the following:
- Is this middleware still required using Mac 10.6.3? Previous posts by Shawn Geddis from Apple seem to apply that everything is provided for within the Mac OS.
- The ECA vendor seemed to imply that the current version of ActivClient is not ready for Snow Leopard.
- Does this middleware impact the logon process or just when I want to sign/encrypt emails? My understanding of its usage is that it is a holder of the 2 certificates that I currently have in a software-version. That I just have to inserted/authenticated during the creation/sending/reading of the emails. We have a mixed Mac/PC environment and I am not fully ready to implement that type of signon environment currently required with government CAC usage. I just want to use the certs for email encryption.
- Does this middleware interface properly with either Mac Mail or Microsoft Entourage or again, is this middleware redundant?
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Bob Colbert
DE Technologies
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