You configure certificates on the Riverbed Cloud Portal.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications between two parties over the internet.

An SSL certificate is an electronic document that binds a public key with a specific entity. An SSL certificate is digitally signed. You can send information to the entity securely (the information cannot be read by others during transmission) if you know the public key.

Certificates can be either self-signed or signed by a third-party known as a Certificate Authority (CA).

In a web-based application, it is the client that authenticates the server. To identify itself, an SSL certificate is installed on a web server and the client checks the credentials of the certificate to make sure it is valid and signed.

Each appliance is manufactured with its own self-signed certificate and private key that uniquely identifies it. Peer appliances authenticate each other by exchanging certificates and negotiating a separate encryption key for each intercepted connection. These certificates are called peering certificates.

You can use one or both of these types of peering certificates in the Riverbed Cloud Portal on the client side: