After deploying digital certificates to secure your websites, networks, or servers, you must find a way to monitor them. Without that, it is difficult to determine whether or not the certificates are doing their job. A certificate lifecycle management system can help you keep a watch on all your digital certificates.
Today, a digital certificate is an essential tool in the fight against malicious elements. It prevents hackers from stealing valuable data by ensuring that only legitimate users and entities gain access to it. And a digital certificate follows a lifecycle. The four stages of its lifecycle are:
Enrollment: In this stage, you apply to a trusted Certificate Authority (CA), requesting a digital certificate. Once it verifies your identity and the information provided by you, it issues you the certificate.
Revocation: This step involves revoking a certificate before its expiration date if it is compromised or the entity for which it was issued is no longer in existence. After it is revoked, it ends up in the certificate revocation list (CRL), informing the CA it is no longer valid.
Renewal: Digital certificates are not created for use for an indefinite period. They are valid only for a limited period. For example, SSL certificates are valid for 15 months or 398 days. For certificates to continue authenticating the identity of your users and external entities, you must renew them before their expiration date.
Removal: Some digital certificates are no longer useful and may cause more problems. This step requires the removal or replacement of such certificates.
Some people try to manually manage their certificates’ lifecycles using Excel sheets. It can result in costly delays and human errors. It is best to tap into a certificate lifecycle management system to avoid that.
Why Use Certificate Lifecycle Management System?
A certificate lifecycle management system enables you to effectively manage the lifecycle of all your certificates – from issuance to renewal/replacement, and that too from a single platform. It offers multiple benefits, including automation, visibility, real-time notifications, and timely renewal.
Automation: A trusted certificate manager automates the entire lifecycle management process. The process gets streamlined as a result of that. It eliminates the risk of human errors as well. And its auto-renew feature ensures that a certificate is renewed before its validity period ends. It also alerts you about the upcoming renewal date.
Visibility: Visibility is another key benefit of using the certificate lifecycle management system. For example, if you use an SSL certificate manager to manage your SSL certificates, you will gain complete visibility into them. Because of that, you have complete control over their lifecycles; therefore, there are no outages caused by an SSL certificate expiration or other issue.
Real-Time Notifications: The certificate lifecycle management system notifies you about an issue or when a certificate is compromised. It enabled you to fix the problem or replace the certificate before malicious elements detect and exploit the vulnerability.
Invest in a Trusted Certificate Manager
You cannot rely on Excel sheets to manage digital certificates. For that, you need to invest in a certificate lifecycle management system, such as the trusted certificate manager Sectigo offers. With it, you can effectively manage the lifecycle of all your certificates and mitigate security and business risks.
