This document describes how to create an encryption profile and provision a Cisco Registered Envelope Service (CRES) account for a Cisco ESA.
This article also explains how to resolve the "Unable to provision profile <profile_name> for reason: Cannot find account" error, commonly encountered on Virtual and Hosted ESA models when adding an encryption profile. If you see this error, use the steps in the Virtual and Hosted ESA section.
The information in this document was created from the devices in a specific lab environment. All of the devices used in this document started with a cleared (default) configuration. If your network is live, ensure that you understand the potential impact of any command.
Virtual and Hosted ESA appliances can display the error "Unable to provision profile <profile_name> for reason: Cannot find account" when provisioning an encryption profile:

Cisco must complete the CRES provisioning account for you. Open a Cisco TAC case with this following:
If you have already tried to create the encryption profile on the ESA, complete these steps:
Hardware ESAs, starting with CRES version 4.2, can auto-provision and do not require manual account creation by email.
Verify your configuration by checking that the admin email address receives notification of account administrator status:

After receiving this notification, log in to the CRES Admin site and verify your account. The account number appears in the Account Summary. To ensure complete visibility of all registered domains, open a Cisco TAC case with:
This guarantees your account has full access to all domains registered through CRES.
The CRES account number is based on contract information tied to the appliance, generated from the Global Ultimate (GU) ID, and the Account Name is based on the Installed At Site Name. For review and entitlement checks, use the Cisco Service Contract Center (CSCC).
This section provides steps to check ESA connectivity to CRES servers.
To verify connectivity, use this command on the ESA CLI:
esa.example.com> telnet res.cisco.com 443 Trying 10.94.241.74... Connected to 10.94.241.74. Escape character is '^]'. ^] telnet> quit Connection closed.
This command checks if the ESA can reach the CRES server on port 443. Use this only for connectivity verification; do not use for other troubleshooting steps.
| Revision | Publish Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
3.0 |
19-Apr-2026
|
Updating per new process. |
1.0 |
14-Aug-2014
|
Initial Release |