Signing requests with certificates in your web applications is something pretty common. Up until recently I was unsure how to load a certificate for use inside a Windows Azure Website. I followed this blog : http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/27/using-certificates-in-azure-websites-applications/ with some googling help from a colleague/friend Bill Wilder.

The first part was getting a .pfx version of my certificate for loading into the Azure portal.

Once you upload the certificate you can then tell Windows Azure Websites to load your certificate into the WAWS personal certificate store. You did this by adding an app setting via the portal. You basically add a setting called WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES with the corresponding certificate thumbprint value.

This tells Azure to allow access of this certificate from your Windows Azure website. I was now able to sign requests to third party data providers like First Data for e-commerce. This was a great find and alos an excellent example of the scalability and great configuration options available in Windows Azure websites.

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About the Author:

Arra Derderian serves as the President and as a Lead Technical Architect for Cloud Construct. As a founder at Cloud Construct, Arra is involved in all levels of the business from new project engagements, project planning, and development.

He also serves as the founder of the Boston Orchard CMS User Group and is a member of the Windows Azure Insiders group.

Arra graduated from Northeastern University School with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.