School ICT News Bulletin No. 195 -

Published by ICT Shared Services

Reverse Proxy SSL Certificates

We are aware of a problem affecting some school hosted web services using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates and have been working to resolve this problem for all schools.

This problem affects school hosted web applications such as a website, learning platform, VLE, etc., published to the Internet via the Bluecoat Reverse Proxy service.

A Wildcard certificate is what we would need to support multiple sub–domains of schoolname.norfolk.sch.uk or *.*.norfolk.sch.uk. However, Nominet (the .norfolk.sch.uk domain issuer) policy prevents this type of certificate from being used.

An alternative solution is to use the .nsix.org.uk domain. This would mean that the services you are running would need to be changed to use something like schoolname–service.nsix.org.uk. As we control the domain – nsix.org.uk – we can use a wildcard certificate.

An example might be yourschool–learningplatform.nsix.org.uk.

We have received positive feedback for this approach from school representatives accessing the Network Managers NSIX Google Group. Before a final decision is made we would like to extend feedback to a wider audience using the survey at https://docs.google.com/a/nsix.org.uk/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGxtYnZucmRkSHNxeVFpVzlrenJvZFE6MQ

Have you joined the Network Managers Google Group? There's lots of discussion and debate around the hot ICT topics for Norfolk's schools – Primary and Secondary! Access to the group is by invitation so please email either michael.pickett@norfolk.gov.uk, kurt.frary@norfolk.gov.uk and include your name, school and NSIX email address.

Author: Rob Price, Service Desk Manager