Systems and methods to identify a certificate authority within an offline manufacturing facility

A method comprising:

• receiving a certificate signing request from a firmware of an information handling system, the certificate signing request including a common name associated with a trusted root certificate authority;
• identifying a factory certificate authority based on the common name;
• signing a certificate using the factory certificate authority including sending data to a hardware security module and receiving encrypted data back from the hardware security module, the data including a factory certificate authority identifier;
• and
• providing the signed certificate, a public key for the factory certificate authority, and a trust chain signed by the trusted root certificate authority to the information handling system to activate a secure management mode of the information handling system.

A system comprising:

• an information handling system having a secure management mode, the information handling system including:
• an out-of-band management controller configured to:
• store a common name and a public key of a trusted root certificate authority in firmware;
• generate a certificate signing request, the certificate signing request including the common name;
• send the certificate signing request to a signing server;
• receive a certificate signed by a factory certificate authority, a public key for the factory certificate authority, and a trust chain signed by the trusted root certificate authority;
• validate the trust chain using the public key of the trusted root certificate authority and the signed certificate using the public key of the factory certificate authority;
• and
• enable secure management mode of the information handling system;
• and
• the signing server including:
• a storage configured to store a table of common names and factory certificate authority identifiers;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• receive the certificate signing request;
• identify the factory certificate authority based on the common name;
• sign a certificate using the factory certificate authority;
• and
• provide the signed certificate, a public key for the factory certificate authority, and a trust chain signed by the trusted root certificate authority to the information handling system.