How to secure your Plesk control panel with an SSL certificate

Plesk control panel has its own SSL certificate, signed by Plesk, but most browsers do not recognize it as valid.

If you want to secure your Plesk control panel from a valid and recognized C.A. (Certification Authority):

• Login in Plesk with admin role
• Go to Tools & Settings => Security => SSL Certificates . A list of SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed.
• Click Add
• Specify the certificate properties:
  – certificate name (a mnemonic to identify your certificate in the repository)
  – Encryption level (choose 2048 bit)
  – Specify your location and organization name (max 64 characters)
  – specify the hostname of your Plesk installation
  – specify your email address
• double-check all the information you provided, because depending on the kind of your SSL certificate (DV, OV or EV) this information will be included or not in your certificate
• click Request
  Plesk will generate your private key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request) and store them in the repository
• click the name of the certificate you need; a page with the certificate’s properties will open.
• Locate the CSR section, and copy to the clipboard all the text (including “—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–” at the beginning and “—–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–” at the end
• order your SSL certificate on euroSSL
  (What kind of SSL certificate? We suggest you a cheap DV SSL Certificate, or a most professional and widely recognized OV SSL Certificate. Usually, a much more expensive EV SSL Certificate is not worthwhile for such kind of application.)
• When you receive your new SSL certificate, return to Plesk’s SSL Certificates Repository, select your certificate and click Upload Certificate
• Copy and paste in plain text the certificate (.crt) and the CA certificate (-ca.crt) which were provided to you together, and then click Upload certificate
• Once you have uploaded your new certificate to the repository, select the corresponding checkbox and then click Secure Plesk
  

It’s all: now your Plesk is secured by the new certificate, and the green closed lock will appear in the navigation bar of the browser.