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How to Export/Back-Up a Digital Certificate on an Apple® Mac Using Apple® Safari or Google® Chrome

Steps

 

 

 

 

Apple Safari and Google Chrome are the support browsers on an Apple Mac that allow certificates to be downloaded. They both store the certificate in a program called Keychain Access which functions as a central store for security information on Apple computers. Please follow the below instructions for how to make a backup from the Keychain Access program.

  1. To locate “Keychain Access”, navigate to the “Applications Folder” on your hard drive. Go to “Utilities” and double-click the “Keychain Access” program icon. You could also locate it by searching in the “Finder Program” and just double-click its’ icon when you find the program after “Finder” shows it to you.
  2. In “Keychain Access” we will need to find your certificate by looking under the “Category” section on the lower left and clicking on the “Certificates” option. You may also have a “My Certificates” listed there and may need to look under both. After clicking on either “Certificates” or “My Certificates”, a list of certificates on your computer will appear.
  3. Your IdenTrust issue will only show your name on it. If you click the arrow to the left, it will show a “key from secure.identrust.com” underneath, if it is the one issued to you by IdenTrust.
  4. Right click on the “Certificate” icon next to the certificate labeled with your name. Click “Export” to start the process of backing-up the certificate.
  5. Complete the certificate export making sure to change the name to something more descriptive like IdenTrust Certificate. When prompted for a password, make sure to provide a password you will be able to remember when you need to use the certificate back-up file.
    • The .p12 file form is the best to use and it is the default option.
    • Also, make sure to save the file to a folder or desktop where it can be easily found or mentally note where it’s being saved (often in Documents).
  6. At the end you will also need to be able to confirm the login keychain password. This can be the same password you initially set-up to login to your computer but can be something else if you opted to change it or reset it. After successfully confirming that, your certificate back-up will be saved in the location you opted to store it in. We recommend storing a copy somewhere off the computer’s main hard drive for safe keeping.