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Generate a Certificate

To encrypt data in Salesforce with Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) key material, use Salesforce to generate a 4096-bit RSA self-signed certificate.

Each BYOK-compatible certificate’s private key is encrypted with a derived, org-specific tenant secret key. This tenant secret key will be generated within the Securosys HSM (see Generate and Wrap BYOK Key Material) and wrapped by the Salesforce BYOK-compatible certificate’s public key.

You can also generate a certificate-authority (CA) signed certificate. See Generate a Certificate Signed by a Certificate Authority for more information. To ensure that your certificate is BYOK-compatible, remember to manually change the Exportable Private Key, Key Size, and Platform Encryption settings.

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If you’re not sure whether a self-signed or CA-signed certificate is right for you, consult your organization’s security policy. For more information about what each option implies, see Certificates and Keys in Salesforce Help.

To create a self-signed certificate follow the next steps:

  1. From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Platform Encryption, and then select Key Management.

  2. Click Bring Your Own Key.

  3. Click Create Self-Signed Certificate.

  4. Enter a unique name for your certificate in the Label field. The Unique Name field automatically assigns a name based on what you enter in the Label field.

    • The Exportable Private Key (1), Key Size (2), and Use Platform Encryption (3) settings are preset. (For a BYOK certificate, you must select 4096 for the key size). These settings ensure that your self-signed certificate is compatible with Salesforce Shield Platform Encryption.

    • Example:

  5. When the Certificate and Key Detail page appears, click Download Certificate. The certificate will be downloaded as a .crt file.

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