UCAS Web Authentication

Accessing protected documents on UCAR web sites

To access any protected document on a UCAR web site, you need to use your UCAR Central Authentication Service (UCAS) password. This is the same password you use to access your time card. Most of these protected documents have the word "internal" somewhere in their URL which automatically triggers WEG web servers to authenticate the user.

To access a protected document on a UCAR webserver

1. In order to access protected web pages, your browser will need accept cookies and support SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). This is the default for most browsers.

2. Use your web browser as you normally do to access the protected web page (eg. click https://www.ucar.edu/inside/internal/pc/index.html)

3. Before the page is displayed, a popup titled "New Site Certificate" appears. Read the text and click the "Next>" button at the bottom.

4. Another popup titled "New Site Certificate" appears. This popup describes the certificate being presented to your computer by the UCAR webserver. Read the text and click the "Next>" button.

5. The next popup offers you three choices: Accepting the UCAR certificate for this session only, rejecting the certificate and the connection, and accepting this certificate until it expires.
   
   We recommend that you accept this certficate until it expires, because this allows you to minimize the number of times you need to go through this "New Site Certificate" process on the computer where your browser is running. (You will have to go through this process on each computer and on each browser you use to access protected UCAR documents.) The certificate lasts for two years, but the cookie to be placed on your system expires in four hours. However, your browser's cache should keep the cookie current until it is purged from your cache.Click the button of your choice, then click the "Next>" button.

6. The next popup clarifies the extent of the protection you can receive from this site certificate encryption, and it allows you to choose a popup warning for each time you attempt to send information to the UCAR webserver. Click the warning button if you want individual warnings, then click the "Next>" button.

7. The fifth popup documents all of the agreements you have made in accepting this site certificate. Click the "Finish" button to access the UCAR gatekeeper authentication popup.

8. The next popup requests your login id and password. Enter your UCAR login id and your UCAR gatekeeper password. This is the same password you now use to access your UCAR time card. Click the "OK" button.
   
   
9. Your browser should now display the protected document you requested.

   Note: If you are accessing a directory or the index.html file in a directory, and your link did not end with a slash (/), then you may see another popup warning that "You have requested an insecure document that was originally designated a secure document...." This warning appears because the webserver must perform a redirect through an insecure document to supply the missing slash character. Click the "Continue Loading" button to proceed to the document you requested.