Connecting a client to a queue manager securely

Secure communications that use the TLS cryptographic security protocols involve setting up the communication channels and managing the digital certificates that you will use for authentication.

To set up your SSL/TLS installation you must define your channels to use TLS. You must also obtain and manage your digital certificates. On a test system, we can use self-signed certificates or certificates issued by a local certificate authority (CA). On a production system, do not use self-signed certificates.

For full information about creating and managing certificates, see the following topics:

• Working with SSL or TLS on IBM® i
• Working with SSL or TLS on UNIX, Linux , and Windows systems
• Working with SSL or TLS on z/OS®

This collection of topics introduces the tasks involved in setting up SSL/TLS communications, and provides step-by-step guidance on completing those tasks.

You might also want to test SSL/TLS client authentication, which are an optional part of the protocols. During the SSL/TLS handshake, the SSL/TLS client always obtains and validates a digital certificate from the server. With the IBM MQ implementation, the SSL/TLS server always requests a certificate from the client.

On IBM i, UNIX, Linux, and Windows systems, the SSL/TLS client sends a certificate only if it has one labeled in the correct IBM MQ format, which is either ibmwebspheremq followed by your logon user ID in lowercase, or the value of the CERTLABL attribute. See Digital certificate labels.

The SSL/TLS server always validates the client certificate if one is sent. If the client does not send a certificate, authentication fails only if the end of the channel that is acting as the SSL/TLS server is defined with either the SSLCAUTH parameter set to REQUIRED or an SSLPEER parameter value set. For more information about connecting a queue manager anonymously, see Connecting a client to a queue manager anonymously.