Manage Device Trust Certificates for Desktop

JumpCloud’s Device Trust Certificates let you allow or deny access to the User Portal and SSO applications based on the desktop device the user is authenticating from. Device Trust is established when the User Portal requests that the desktop client present a certificate, and the user’s browser provides that certificate. Device Trust can save users time and allow seamless access to applications.

When you enable certificate distribution, the agent server sends an update that causes the agent (along with the user-agent where applicable) to request and install Device Trust certificate bundles on the device. One certificate request is made per managed user.

Prerequisites:

• Conditional Access Policies, which let you relax, restrict, or deny user access to resources, work in tandem with Device Trust Certificates for any policy that uses a device condition. You’ll need to create a conditional access policy before you can implement Device Trust.
  • See Configure a Conditional Access Policy.
  • Conditional Access is a Platform Prime feature. See JumpCloud pricing for more information about Platform Prime. 

Considerations:

• Device Trust certificates covered in this article apply only to desktop devices using the JumpCloud Agent and supported web browsers.
• Certificates are distributed only to JumpCloud managed users on devices.

Understanding the Device Trust Certificate Bundle

The JumpCloud Device Trust certificate bundle contains four parts:

• Root Certificate – The JumpCloud Production Device Identification Root CA certificate is a self-signed certificate and displays as untrusted in some certificate managers, but this is not an issue.
• Intermediate Certificate – The device-trust.intermediate certificate.
• Leaf Certificate – The JumpCloud Device Trust Certificate – …….. certificate. The browser presents this certificate in response to the challenge from the agent server. The ‘……..’ contains an eight-digit hexadecimal identifier. The identifier is only used to ensure that two different leaf certs will have unique names.
• Private key – The Imported Private Key was created by the agent on the user’s behalf to generate the certificate signing request, as part of requesting the Device Trust certificate. It’s packaged along with the certificates so it can be used to sign requests to the agent server.

Finding the Storage Location of Global Device Certificates

On macOS:

• The certificates are stored in a new jumpcloud-device-trust-keychain in the user’s Library/Keychains folder.
• The generated password for the new keychain is stored in the user’s login keychain, in a generic password item named JumpCloud Device Trust Keychain Password. This allows the user agent to unlock the Device Trust keychain when it needs access to install or renew certificates.
• The Device Trust keychain password will be rotated every time a certificate is installed or renewed.

On Windows:

• The agent installs the root (CA) certificate in the system cert store
• The user-agent installs the intermediate certificate in the user’s Intermediate Certification Authorities store, and the Device Trust certificate in the user’s Personal store.

On Linux:

• Certificates are stored in the user’s NSS database (~/.pki/nssdb/cert9.db, ~/.pki/nssdb/key4.db).
• If the database does not exist, the agent will create a new one
• Certificate auto-select filters are found in /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/JumpCloudCertificateAutoselect.json

Distributing Global Device Certificates 

Distribute device certificates from the Conditional Policies Settings page or when you create your first policy that uses a device condition. See Configure a Conditional Access Policy to learn how to distribute certificates when you create your first device-based policy. 

To distribute a device certificate from the Conditional Policies Settings page: 

1. Log in to the JumpCloud Admin Portal. 
2. Go to SECURITY MANAGEMENT > Conditional Policies. 
3. Click Settings to the right of the policies. You can also click Edit in Settings under Global Policies.
   
4. In Device Certificates, set Global Certificate Distribution to ON.
5. Click save changes. 

Removing Global Device Certificates

You can remove global device certificates after you’ve distributed them. When you disable global device certificates, existing policies aren’t updated, and any custom macOS Keychain Application Access configurations are removed. To make sure users have uninterrupted access to their resources, disable policies with a device condition before you remove global device certificates. Learn how to disable a policy in Configure a Conditional Access Policy. 

To remove global device certificates:

1. Log in to the JumpCloud Admin Portal. 
2. Go to SECURITY MANAGEMENT > Conditional Policies. 
3. Click Settings to the right of the policies. You can also click Edit in Settings under Global Policies.
4. In Device Certificates, set Global Certificate Distribution to OFF.  
5. Click save changes.
    

Users: Selecting a Device Trust Certificate

As part of Device Trust, users may see prompts to select Device Trust certificates when browsing to the JumpCloud User Portal or using some SSO-enabled applications after certificate distribution is enabled. You should inform users that these types of prompts are legitimate and expected, and to select the JumpCloud Device Trust Certificate and let the application or browser proceed.

The prompt may present multiple JumpCloud Device Trust Certificate options, but they are all the same certificate, and the user can select any one.

Addressing Persistent Certificate Prompts on macOS

In some applications on macOS (Google Chrome, for example), the certificate selection prompt may persistently appear, even when the user has previously selected the certificate. To resolve this issue, restart the device.

If a restart does not resolve the issue, you can gather the Device Trust Password from the macOS Keychain and input it when prompted.

To gather the Device Trust Password on a macOS device:

1. On the macOS device, open the Keychain app.
2. In the list of keychains, locate the JumpCloud Device Trust Keychain Password item under the Login keychain and double-click.
3. The keychain entry opens in a new window. Click Show password and a password prompt appears.
   1. Enter the user’s local device account password (the same password used for device login) and click Allow.
   2. A second password prompt appears, enter the device account password again and click Allow.
      
4. In the keychain window, the Device Trust password will now appear. Select the password and Copy it.
5. When prompted for the JumpCloud Device Trust Key, Paste this password into the field.
6. Important! Click Always Allow. Clicking Allow may not prevent the popup from reappearing later.