Health Registration Authority (HRA) provides a service for the Network Access Protection (NAP) platform that is commonly referred to as a registration authority in an X.509 public key infrastructure (PKI). As a registration authority, HRA is responsible for validating client credentials and then forwarding a certificate request to a certification authority (CA) on behalf of the client. HRA validates certificate requests by checking with Network Policy Server (NPS) to determine if the NAP client is compliant with network health requirements. If the client is found to be compliant, HRA requests a special type of certificate from the CA called a health certificate. The health certificate is used by NAP client computers to communicate on an IPsec-protected network. In this capacity, HRA functions as a NAP enforcement server for the NAP Internet Protocol security (IPsec) enforcement method.