Requesting IRB Exchange Accounts

Before you can begin using the Huron IRB Exchange, you'll need to request the accounts you need. This involves providing the results of your planning process to Huron Support, including:

  • Your planning spreadsheet that identifies the accounts you need, corresponding organization names, certificate-related file names, and details needed to create your test certificates.

  • The public keys for the certificate files you purchased. These keys will be used by the IRB Exchange to authenticate requests from your IRB systems.

Email these items to Huron Support, with the files as attachments.

What You Will Receive

Huron will respond with:

  • IRB Exchange account IDs. These account IDs will be a key part of your configuration of your connections to the IRB Exchange.

  • One or more test certificates to use on your staging system. These complimentary certificates will enable your staging system to authenticate with the IRB Exchange test site for practice purposes. Huron will use a secure method to provide the certificates, which will be encapsulated in a zip file. Inside each zip file, you will find:
    • {CommonName}.cer. This is your public certificate that was registered on the IRB Exchange test system.
    • {CommonName}.pfx. This certificate contains your private key, and may be protected by a password. This should be imported into your server's local certificate store. For detailed instructions, see Installing the Certificate on Your Server.
    • intermediate.cer. This is the public certificate that was used to sign your test certificate. This must be installed into your server's Intermediate Certification Authorities certificate store.
    • root.cer. This is the public certificate of the root IRB Exchange Test Certificate Authority. This must be installed into your server's Trusted Root Certification Authorities.

  • A support case number to use for ongoing communications. The Huron support organization will track your request and all responses through this support case. Using the support case number in all of your communications with Huron is helpful in expediting your requests.

Next Steps

Next, you'll install the certificates you obtained on the appropriate servers, as described in Installing the Certificate on Your Server.