When your application makes a secure outbound connection using HTTPS, the external host presents a certificate for secure connection authentication. Your application checks this certificate against the certificates in the Pega Platform truststore. If the certificate is not present, the external host is not authenticated, and an exception is thrown. The Pega Platform truststore holds both the public keys and certificates of your trusted external systems.

At runtime, Pega Platform looks for certificates to load in the following order: first from the Pega Platform truststore, then from the application server truststore, and finally from the JVM truststore. After loading a certificate, Pega Platform syncs updates to the certificate in real time and presents them to applications for use with secure outbound connections.

Pega Platform features that require x.509 certificates include the functions described below.

• Authentication services that import identity metadata exposed over an HTTPS URL
• Connectors that access external REST API over HTTPS

If you require use of certificates for your applications outbound connections that do not use HTTPS, speak to your regional Pega support team.

1. In the left navigation pane of Dev Studio, click RecordsTechnicalActivity.
2. In the Applies To column, click the search icon (▼).
3. In the Search Text field, enter Data-Admin-Security-Certificate.

   The Record page displays the certificate management activities.

   • The activity Add certificates to Platform Truststore from Pega Keystore (pxAddCertificatesToPlatformTrustore) adds certificates from a Pega keystore rule into the Pega Platform truststore. The activity contains the following parameters:
     • keystoreName: String. The Java KeyStore (JKS) or Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS212) instance from which to import the certificate.
     • overwriteDuplicates: Boolean. When enabled, this activity overwrites the existing Platform truststore certificate with a new certificate of the same alias. When disabled, this activity excludes duplicate certificates from the import.
     • checkExpiryDate: Boolean. Select this check box for this activity to exclude adding expired certificates to the Platform truststore.

   • The activity Change Certificate Status (pxChangeCertificateStatus) changes the status of a certificate to Active or Inactive. The activity contains the following parameters:
     • certificateAliasName: String. The alias name given to the certificate of which you want to change the status.
     • certificateStatus: String. Enter Active or Inactive to apply the respective status to the certificate.

   • The activity Delete Certificate (pxDeleteCertificate) removes the specified certificate from the Platform truststore. The activity contains the following parameter:
     • certificateAliasName: String. The alias name of the certificate to remove from the Platform truststore.
4. Select an activity to add certificates, change certificate status, or remove certificates from the Platform truststore.
5. Run the respective certificate activity by clicking ActionsRun.
6. Complete each field that is defined in the parameters for the activity that you ran.