A method of acquiring an operational
certificate for an application (140) running on an authorized and / or authenticated host node (130) in a network (100), the method comprising: transmitting, by the application, a request comprising a
Certificate Signing Request to a proxy engine (145) running on the authorized and / or authenticated host node; receiving, by the proxy engine, the request, and submitting the
Certificate Signing Request to a
Certificate Authority (155); signing, by the
Certificate Authority, the operational
certificate and transmitting a response comprising the signed operational
certificate to the proxy engine; and forwarding, by the proxy engine, the signed operational certificate to the application.