Sponsored by: Beckhoff
The TwinCAT OPC UA Server software from Beckhoff has been extended with the standardized GDS interfaces to support the Push Certificate Management model of the Global Discovery Server (GDS).
OPC UA applications registered with a GDS can also use the GDS for central certificate management. The GDS can manage self-signed certificates, but the main use-case is the management of a Certificate Authority (CA), the generation of CA signed application certificates, and the distribution of the CA-related Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL).
The GDS concept defines a standardized server interface which allows the management of the server certificate and trust list. This management is then done through a GDS client that connects to the GDS server on behalf of the OPC UA server application to manage and update the server certificate. This update model is called “Push Certificate Management” and is now supported by the TwinCAT OPC UA Server.
All functionality related to certificate management requires administrative rights on the server and encrypted communication channels.
This new feature of the TwinCAT OPC UA Server will be available from Beckhoff in TwinCAT part number TF6100, setup version 4.3.28.
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