For a number of years we've used security certificates provided by Thawte. We've recently changed the certificate authority we use, and new certificates will be verified by DigiCert instead.

Services that will be making use of the new DigiCert signed certificates are: elections.ru.ac.za, eprints.ru.ac.za, imap.ru.ac.za, login.ru.ac.za, mail.ru.ac.za, mealserver.ru.ac.za, register.ru.ac.za, ross.ru.ac.za, rt.ru.ac.za, ross.ru.ac.za, ruconnected.ru.ac.za, wlan-switch-amm.ru.ac.za, wlan-switch-struben.ru.ac.za and of course www.ru.ac.za.

We'll be deploying new certificates to these servers over the next week -- some have already been done.

Most people will not notice the change, at least as far as secure web sites go. If you do and your web browser prompts you with certificate errors for any of the above sites, the likely causes are:
  • your computer's clock is incorrect; or
  • your web browser is very old.
You can solve the problem by fixing the date and time on your PC and/or upgrading your browser. The same applies to your e-mail client, if you're using secure connections to our e-mail servers.

Where you will notice the change is whilst connecting to the secure wireless networks (i.e. the ru.ac.za and campus.ru.ac.za wireless networks). More information will follow about this in a separate post.

You'll note that some of the services listed above are ones that were using certificates signed by Rhodes' own internal certificate authority. We'll still be making use of Rhodes' internal certificate authority in some instances, however, and so the registration system will continue to prompt you to install our certificate authority's root certificate.