Understanding SSL Certificates

You can get free SSL Certificates from ZeroSSL.

ZeroSSL by default supplies certificates in PEM format. To convert your certificate to PKCS12 please follow these steps:

1. Download your certificate from ZeroSSL and unzip it to a folder on your harddisk
2. If you're using Windows, install OpenSSL and add it to your path. MacOS has Openssl pre-installed, most Linux distributions as well.
3. On MacOS and Linux open a terminal (on Windows open a command prompt) and change to the directory where you extracted the certificates to
4. Run the following commands to generate the "certificate.p12" PKCS12 file:

On MacOS or Linux:

cat certificate.crt ca_bundle.crt > full_chain.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -out certificate.p12 -inkey private.key -in full_chain.crt

On Windows:

copy /b certificate.crt + ca_bundle.crt full_chain.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -out certificate.p12 -inkey private.key -in full_chain.crt

OpenSSL

OpenSSL is a robust, commercial-grade, and full-featured toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. It is also a general-purpose cryptography library.

You can download the source code from GitHub, at https://github.com/openssl/openssl. 

The Win32/Win64 OpenSSL Installation Project is dedicated to providing a simple installation of OpenSSL for Microsoft Windows.  It is easy to set up and easy to use through the simple, effective installer. No need to compile anything, just click a few times and it is installed, leaving you to doing real work. To use OpenSSL from the DOS command line mode, you will need to add the installation folder to your environment PATH setting.

Install SSL Certificate in Windows

In the search box at the bottom left, type in “mmc” and click on the search result to open the management console:

When the console opens, from the File menu select “Add/Remove Snap-in”:

In the list of available snap-ins, select “Certificates”, then click the “Add” button in the middle to bring Certificates into the list of selected snap-ins on the right:

On the next page of the dialog, select "Computer account" and click "Next":

Select "Local computer" and click "Finish":

On the snap-ins window, click OK to close it:

The Certificates snap-in opens in the console. Right click on the “Personal” folder and in the context menu select "All Tasks -> Request New Certificate". This assumes that you’ve configured Active Directory Certificate Services in your environment and you’ll be issuing certificates from there. If you’ve generated the certificate somewhere else or purchased it from a third-party Certificate Authority, you can choose "Import" from the menu instead.