KB44283 - Pulse Client : Unable to read certificates from smart card into mac key-chain on Catalina

This article describes an issue where Pulse client is unable to read certificates from smart card into mac key-chain on Catalina

Due to failure in recognizing the smart card certificate under "key Chain Access", pulse client is failing to establish tunnel.

This is due to the changes that Apple has brought in. The following link details regarding Catalina specific changes for smartcard - HT210541
 
Apple has changed the existing framework and mandated to use cryptotokenkit framework instead of TokenD which was used until Mojave release. The driver support  to read certificates from smart card  is provided by third party packages. However with Catalina, these are broken as none of the software providers are supporting it.Apple has very recently provided drivers for cryptotokenkit framework.

 

Pulse Secure will be providing PIV and CAC based smart card support for Catalina on 9.1R3.1 PDC which is available on our support site.

Please refer to 9.1R3.1 PDC SPG for smart cards we support under Table 5