Cobalt 1.4 – New Capabilities

Cobalt provides a web interface for provisioning users and roles in an LDAP directory. It enables the easy deployment of XMPP, Email and Military Messaging systems.

Listed below are the changes brought in with 1.4.

HSM Support

Cobalt is Isode’s tool for managing PKCS#11 Hardware Security Modules (HSM) which may be used to provide improved server security by protecting PKI private keys.

• Cobalt provides a generic capability to initialize  HSMs and view keys
  • Multiple HSMs can be configured and one set to active
  • Tested with Nitrokey, Yubikey, SoftHSM and Gemalto networked HSM
• Enables key pair generation and Certificate Signing Request (CSR) interaction with Certificate Authority (CA)
• Support for S/MIME signing and encryption
  • User identities for email
  • Organization and Role identities for military messaging
• Server identities that can be used for TLS with Isode servers

Isode Servers 

A new tab for Isode servers is added that:

• Enables HSM identities to be provisioned
• Enables a password to be set, which is needed for Isode servers that bind to directory to obtain authorization, authentication and other information
• Facilitates adding Isode servers to a special directory access control group, that enables passwords (usually SCRAM hashed) to be read, to enable SCRAM and other SASL mechanisms to be used by the application

Profiler Enhancement

• Extend the SIC rule so that multiple SICs or SIC patterns can be set in a single rule