Not long ago, SSL/TLS certificates lasted five years. Then it was just over a year (398 days). Now? The industry is facing a radical drop, with proposals to slash certificate validity to just 47 days by 2029. This isn’t a distant “what if;” leading browsers and certificate authorities have already voted to implement the change.
The clock is ticking, and manual certificate management simply won’t keep up.
Why the shift? Shorter lifespans mean smaller attack windows. That’s good for security. But for your team, it means the pace of renewals is about to explode. What used to be a once-a-year task could soon become a daily scramble – unless you automate.
A phased, practical approach to certificate automation is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a must-have to stay secure, stay compliant, and stay sane.
Read on to learn why, if your certificate strategy isn’t evolving, it’s falling behind.
From Shorter Lifespans to Quantum: Why Smart Automation Matters Now
The drive to shorten certificate validity is motivated by two realities: a rising tide of certificate-related risk today, and the existential cryptographic risk posed by quantum computing. By extrapolating from the current state of quantum computing, we can say that “Q day,” the day quantum computers can render all current encryption algorithms and methods redundant, is coming.
NIST has already declared a deprecation date for traditional algorithms beginning in 2030 – regardless of when we see quantum compromise of advanced algorithms like RSA, the move towards post-quantum cryptography (PQC) needs to start now. That shift begins with certificate automation.
As certificate lifespans shrink to 200, 100, and eventually 47 days, organizations must pivot from periodic updates to continuous renewal. This operational rhythm will mirror the future demands of PQC, which will require frequent crypto agility as new algorithms are introduced, tested, and deployed.
Certificate Lifecycle Management Must Keep Pace with Issuance
Almost every organization has experienced a situation where a critical website or application is hit with errors or taken down completely due to an expired TLS certificate.
It’s true that some organizations have begun to adopt shorter certificate lifespans with their internal private PKI as they aim to improve security and automate processes, as well as keep pace with certificate issuance on short-lived container and cloud workloads.
However, compulsory replacement timelines will be a major change. With the upcoming staged reductions targeting 200 days by 2026, 100 days by 2027, and 47 days by 2029, the pressure is on to automate early and often.
The reality is that few organizations are confident in their certificate lifecycle management processes.
TLS certificates can create outages or service disruptions even at the most security-focused organizations. This happens because the design of modern enterprise systems is more complex and decentralized than many legacy PKI solutions can handle. The challenge of PKI is also, generally speaking, underprioritized by the organizations that rely on it.
Understaffed PKI teams, who often have other security responsibilities, have little capacity for the critical task of certificate lifecycle management, and expanding IT environments make their job increasingly difficult. In many enterprise applications, like Exchange and SQL servers, certificates cannot be installed automatically to begin with.
The long-term solution is to move towards automating certificate deployment and revocation with technologies based on a combination of approaches, including protocols like ACME, APIs, and agent-based or agentless automation tools provided by certificate lifecycle automation solutions. Manual tracking, spreadsheets, and ticket queues will not scale when certificates expire every few weeks instead of every few months. However, the current status quo of certificate management importance within most organizations means that automation uptake is not the default norm.
An organization may use thousands, if not tens of thousands, of certificates to secure internal and external applications, while PKI teams often rely on spreadsheets to keep track of PKI status, adding certs to ticket queues when expiry draws near. The result is that the majority of organizations do not have enough staff or resources to safely sustain their PKIs.
Shorter certificate validity windows mean more frequent handoffs between teams, more time-sensitive work, and a greater risk of miscommunication.
Every missed renewal becomes a potential outage, and every outage has downstream consequences. The result is increased administrative risk. Outages cause an estimated $400 billion in revenue damage annually. More frequent certificate turnover raises the odds of failure, and more organizations will find themselves caught off guard.
Downtime as a result of expired certificates has a direct effect on the bottom line – preparation is key.
For example, short lifespans create unique challenges for air-gapped and legacy systems. These systems, common in operational technology (OT), critical infrastructure, defense, and other regulated industries, often rely on manual certificate updates due to strict network segmentation and security policies.
That was feasible when certificates only needed to be rotated once a year. Under a 90- or 47-day restriction, manual deployment quickly becomes untenable for air-gapped systems requiring physical access, out-of-band updates, and coordination across disconnected teams and toolchains.
CLM Technology Is Critical for Effectively Securing Certificates
Because no organization is going to, or should, scale back certificate usage, the best response is to deploy a combination of centralization and automation technologies.
Certificate lifecycle management (CLM) has emerged as a proven solution for developing rapid and sustainable SSL capabilities in modern, distributed IT environments.
Specifically, CLM brings four core PKI management capabilities that help organizations securely manage shorter certificate lifecycles:
- Discovery. CLM tools automate certificate discovery and classify an organization’s PKI environment. Even in complex environments with legacy issues or more than one CA vendor, an up-to-date picture of the PKI situation can be rapidly achieved with CLM.
- Centralization. CLM centralizes PKI management data. IT teams at organizations with multiple CA vendors can track all their active certificates and see upcoming and future expiration dates, certificate status, and potential vulnerabilities in real time. This helps eliminate the risk of lost, forgotten, or compromised certificates as expiry cycles shorten.
- Automated Certificate Renewal and Issuance. CLM solutions can automate the entire lifecycle of certificates across most systems with the right combination of capabilities. From issuance to provisioning, automated workflows help ensure that the vast majority of certificates are renewed well before expiration, minimizing downtime and errors.
- Automated Enforcement of Security Policies. With CLM, organizations can enforce security policies across all their certificates. This includes making sure that only secure cryptographic algorithms are used, only trusted CAs can issue certificates, and unmanaged certificates are flagged and remediated.
Scalable Certificate Management
Manual certificate lifecycle management can work up to a point, but as certificate lifespans get shorter, very few organizations can afford the administrative risk that manual processes create.
The only sustainable response is to move toward automation as the default. With renewals eventually happening as often as 47 days, traditional workflows simply will not keep up.
Whether an organization has hundreds or tens of thousands of certificates, a CLM platform can ensure reliable and safe certificate discovery, issuance, and revocation without adding extra workload. These shifts echo the larger transformation coming with post-quantum cryptography. The ability to continuously rotate certificates today is the foundation for crypto agility tomorrow.
Keyfactor’s Certificate Lifecycle Automation makes it possible for smaller teams to manage certificates across multiple domains, devices, and environments. As certificate timelines shrink and cryptographic demands grow, automation is not nice-to-have, it is mission critical.
