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Clifton 0.3.0, published by Clifton, is a lightweight Windows utility designed to streamline the creation, rotation, and revocation of SSH certificates in enterprise and DevOps environments. Falling under the System Administration category, the application provides a graphical front-end that wraps around standard OpenSSH binaries, allowing administrators to issue short-lived host and user certificates without manually editing sshd_config or juggling command-line flags. Typical use cases include automating certificate authority workflows for cloud fleets, replacing legacy password-based logins on CI/CD build agents, and enforcing granular role-based access across mixed Linux-Windows infrastructures. Operators can import existing public keys, define custom principals and validity windows, and export signed certificates in both RSA and ECDSA formats; a built-in calendar view highlights expiration dates to prevent service outages caused by overlooked key rollover. The program maintains an internal audit log that records every signing event together with the issuing CA fingerprint, satisfying compliance requirements that mandate traceable key lineage. Clifton ships in two concurrent versions: the current 0.3.0 release introduces a wizard for batch-signing multiple keys against a single policy template, while the previous 0.2.x branch remains available for sites that rely on its legacy PKCS#11 integration. Both editions are portable executables that run without elevation on Windows 10 1903 or newer, storing their configuration in a local JSON file that can be tracked under version control alongside infrastructure-as-code repositories. Clifton is available for free on get.nero.com, with downloads provided via trusted Windows package sources such as winget, always delivering the latest version and supporting batch installation of multiple applications.
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