As your business grows, secure operations mean cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Hiring more IT personnel to focus only on your security certificate lifecycle management system isn’t financially wise or logical. And it only takes one human error to create a vulnerability in your system that cybercriminals can exploit.
Automated certificate management aims to defeat the possibility of human errors. It allows your existing IT personnel to focus on other important technical tasks. Knowing what tools are available to automate, manage, and monitor your certificate lifecycle effectively can ensure secure business operations while minimizing downtime and costs.
Certificate Lifecycle Automation And Management Platforms
Tools that provide start-to-finish certificate management automation are key to enhanced security and cost-effective operation of your business. A comprehensive certificate lifecycle automation and management system will make it easier to request, issue, verify, remove expired certificates, revoke, destroy expired or revoked certificates, and replace certificates without error. These platforms can have many certificate management tools and technologies integrated into one system. The tools and technologies can install and used separately depending on the need.
Whatever software applications you use to operate your business can easily integrate into certificate lifecycle automation and management platforms.
Certificate Scanner And Vulnerability Assessment Tools
One tool that can help with a security certificate management system is an automated certificate discovery process, such as the one that Sectigo offers. It can locate any certificate, no matter where it is installed, and identify, organize, and audit them. The discovery manager can find certificates, regardless of which CA issued it, behind a firewall, on local systems, or in a cloud.
Certificate Transparency Logs
While the certificate scanner can search the entire system for legitimate certificates and categorize them, it can also locate rogue certificates issued by the CA but compromised or issued to the wrong party. Certificate transparency logs help IT personnel oversee the certificates so that when these types of certificates are detected, they can remove, eliminating vulnerabilities that are easy to exploit.
Certificate Revocation Monitoring Technology
There are reasons that certificates should be revoked or invalidated before their expiration date. Situations that may provoke the revocation of certificates include:
- When a certificate’s encryption keys show signs that it has been compromised
- Errors are found within issued certificates
- There was a change in the usage of the certificate
- The certificate’s owner is no longer considered trusted
Once the certificates have been revoked, they are assigned to a list. This list may contain information such as the identity of the revoked certificate, the date the certificate was revoked, the specific time period that applies to the revocation, if applicable, and the reason for the revocation.
Certificate Reporting Tools
A certificate management system can generate reports to plan the certificate lifecycle process quickly and easily. You can also use the reports to assess your system’s security compliance. The reports will show if your system is doing its job in regulating access and eliminating certificate-related errors.
Let Certificate Management Automation Lighten The Load
As more and more certificates are needed when your business grows, it gets more difficult to manually track where in the lifecycle they are and when to take action on certificates that pose a danger. These automation tools can combine into one powerful certificate management system or can use separately as needed. Don’t let poor certificate management cost you excessive downtime and costs.
