HTTPS Certificate for internal use

I did the following, which worked nicely for me:

I got a wildcard SSL cert for *.mydomain.com (Namecheap, for example, provide this cheaply)

I created a CNAME DNS record pointing "mybox.mydomain.com" at "mybox.local".

I hope that helps - unfortunately you'll have the expense of a wildcard cert for your domain name, but you may already have that.


You'd have to ask the typical cert people for that. For ease of use I'd get with the FQDN though, you might use a subdomain to your already registered one: https://mybox.example.com

Also you might want to look at wildcard certificates, providing a blanket cert for (e.g.) https://*.example.com/ - even usable for virtual hosting, should you need more than just this one cert.

Certifying sub- or sub-sub domains of FQDN should be standard business - maybe not for the point&click big guys that proud themselves to provide the certificates in just 2 minutes.

In short: To make the cert trusted by a workstation you'd have to either

  • change settings on the workstations (which you don't want) or
  • use an already trusted party to sign your key (which you're looking for a way around).

That's all your choices. Choose your poison.


You have two practical options:

  1. Stand up your own CA. You can do it with OpenSSL and there's a lot of Google info out there.

  2. Keep using your self-signed cert, but add the public key to your trusted certs in the browser. If you're in an Active Directory domain, this can be done automatically with group policy.