How to: Sign a Package by Using a Digital Certificate

This topic describes how to sign an Integration Services package with a digital certificate. You can use a digital signature, together with other settings, to prevent a package that is not valid from loading and running.

Before you can sign an Integration Services package, you must do the following tasks:

  • Create or obtain a private key to associate with the certificate, and store this private key on the local computer.

  • Obtain a certificate for the purpose of code signing from a trusted certification authority. You can use one of the following methods to obtain or create a certificate:

    • Obtain a certificate from a public, commercial certification authority that issues certificates.

    • Obtain a certificate from a certificate server, such as Windows 2003 Certificate Services, that enables an organization to internally issue certificates. You have to add the root certificate that is used to sign the certificate to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store. To add the root certificate, you can use the Certificates snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). For more information, see the topic, "Certificate Services," in the MSDN library.

    • Create your own certificate for testing purposes only. The Certificate Creation Tool (Makecert.exe) generates X.509 certificates for testing purposes. For more information, see the topic, "Certificate Creation Tool (Makecert.exe)," in the MSDN Library.

    For more information about certificates, see the online Help for the Certificates snap-in. For more information about how to sign digital assets, see the topic, "Signing and Checking Code with Authenticode," in the MSDN Library.

  • Make sure that the certificate has been enabled for code signing. To determine whether a certificate is enabled for code signing, review the properties of the certificate in the Certificates snap-in.

  • Store the certificate in the Personal store.

After you have completed the previous tasks, you can use the following procedure to sign a package.

To sign a package

  1. In Business Intelligence Development Studio, open the Integration Services project that contains the package to be signed.

  2. In Solution Explorer, double-click the package to open it.

  3. In SSIS Designer, on the SSIS menu, click Digital Signing.

  4. In the Digital Signing dialog box, click Sign.

  5. In the Select a Certificate dialog box, select a certificate.

  6. (Optional) Click View Certificate to view certificate information.

  7. Click OK to close the Select a Certificate dialog box.

  8. Click OK to close the Digital Signing dialog box.

  9. To save the updated package, click Save Selected Items on the File menu.

    Although the package has been signed, you must now configure Integration Services to check or verify the digital signature before loading the package. For more information, see Using Digital Signatures with Packages.