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These properties are used by the CXF web services stack for initiating an SSL connection. The CONNECT team has an open issue to investigate using the application server configuration to both cut down on configuration required as well as support network deployments where file references to the key and trust stores aren't available.
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CONNECT currently uses certificates for three purposes, SSL, SAML Assertion signatures, and EndorsingSupportingToken Signatures (timestamp signature). The use of java system variables for certificate configuration affects both the outbound SSL, and the SAML Assertion signature. There are multiple ways of configuring outbound SSL certificates in CONNECT, the current method is to create a set of TLSParameters from scratch passing in keystores and truststores. However the CONNECT team has proved that another method involving retrieving an SSLSocketFactory from the container's SSLContext is not only viable but works on all supported application servers.
Message Level Security
With the introduction of CXF in CONNECT 4.0, the CONNECT gateway instantly supported using separate certificates for SSL and Message level security, through CXF's inherent configuration. There are a set of properties files the CONNECT properties directory which allow adopters to configure message level security:
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