The increasing use of digital certificates is becoming a significant challenge. Organizations are deploying more certificates than ever, driven by new innovations that both advance and complicate their use. DevOps teams, for instance, rely on certificates to sign code, but often lack the expertise to manage them properly. In the realm of IoT, every device requires its own certificate, creating a massive scaling issue.
In addition, the impending need for quantum-resistant cryptography will necessitate a shift in the algorithms used in certificates to secure information, a process that is notoriously challenging.
The stakes are high. Breaches and outages are expensive and can damage your reputation. Emerging compliance regulations will further elevate the importance of effective certificate management.
To navigate these challenges, you’ll need well-defined policies, more automation, and a better understanding of crypto-agility. Centralizing certificate management is the crucial first step in this process, improving how you handle certificates efficiently now and in the future.
Centralization is a key strategy to streamline operations, enhance security, and mitigate risks. Centralizing certificate management, in particular, offers numerous advantages that contribute to the overall resilience and efficiency of an organization’s digital infrastructure.
What is certificate management?
Certificate management refers to the process of overseeing, organizing, and maintaining digital certificates throughout their lifecycle.
Digital certificates are used to authenticate the identity of users, systems, and devices in digital communications and transactions. Certificates facilitate public-key cryptographic operations, which enable confidential communications and ensure the integrity of data in transit.
What does centralization look like?
Centralized certificate management is the practice of consolidating all certificate-related tasks, processes, and resources into a single, unified system or platform. It allows organizations to manage their entire certificate landscape from a central location. This approach enables a holistic view of all certificates issued, their status, and their associated metadata.
Centralization involves bringing together certificates from various sources, such as internal certificate authorities (CAs), public CAs, and cloud-based services, into a single repository or management interface.
All certificates in a single repository
Managing digital certificates can be a daunting task, especially when relying on certificate managers provided by CA vendors that only cover certificates issued by their own CA. This becomes particularly problematic considering that the average organization uses around nine different CAs. This fragmented approach leads to inefficiencies and increased complexity.
Imagine the hassle of using just two different management tools—it’s twice the work and twice the potential for errors. Centralization offers a straightforward solution by serving as a universal hub for all certificates across your enterprise. With centralized certificate management, you streamline operations, reduce the risk of outages, and maintain tighter control over your security posture.
A single, centralized repository for all your certificates not only simplifies management but also enhances visibility, ensuring that no certificate goes unnoticed or unmanaged.
Easier-to-implement policies
Centralization provides organizations with comprehensive visibility across their entire certificate landscape. With this enhanced oversight, they can develop and implement policies and processes that streamline certificate management and significantly reduce the margin for error.
Without centralized management, PKI often falls by the wayside. Siloed teams, typically within development, may independently procure their own solutions, leading to redundancy and increased risk. These teams rarely document their certificates, making them difficult to detect until they expire and cause outages.
Few organizations have dedicated teams for managing PKI and certificates. Instead, this responsibility often falls to security, IT, or infrastructure teams, who are more focused on immediate administrative tasks rather than strategic policy development. As a result, certificate management practices tend to evolve on an ad-hoc basis. It’s not that organizations take a “wrong approach” to certificate management; rather, they often don’t take a systematic approach due to a lack of expertise and bandwidth.
Centralizing certificate management changes this dynamic. It equips organizations with the data and insights needed to create effective, long-term policies. By making all certificates visible, teams gain the information they need to manage certificates proactively, ensuring that their PKI strategy is robust and resilient for the future.
Automation becomes possible
Certificates are an integral part of modern IT infrastructure and their volume is only set to increase. As certificate lifecycles shorten, the need for frequent renewals becomes inevitable. Automation prevents teams from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of certificate management tasks.
Modern certificate management solutions are designed to proactively discover, log, and track all certificates within the IT landscape, including those that are hidden, untracked, and undocumented. This comprehensive approach ensures that no certificate is overlooked. On average, organizations rely on nine different CAs, leading to a fragmented landscape where each CA operates independently, making it challenging to maintain visibility and control over certificates.
With automation, certificates can be renewed automatically before they expire, reducing the need for manual intervention and significantly lowering the risk of outages.
Additionally, the ability to revoke and reissue certificates and CAs in bulk allows teams to respond quickly to issues and compromises, ensuring the integrity and security of the IT environment.
Implementing automation in certificate management enhances your efficiency AND ensures a more secure and compliant certificate infrastructure amid increasing demands.
4 benefits of a centralized certificate manager
✔️ Outages become a thing of the past
Despite the growth and evolution of certificate management solutions, organizations of all sizes continue to suffer from certificate-related outages. High-profile companies like SpaceX, Microsoft, and Spotify have experienced significant disruptions due to expired certificates, highlighting the ongoing risks associated with inadequate certificate management.
According to the 2024 PKI & Digital Trust report, a staggering 81% of organizations experienced at least two or more certificate-related outages in the past 24 months. On average, it takes over 5 hours and 8 team members to identify and remediate these outages, underscoring the substantial resource drain and operational impact.
These outages are not just minor inconveniences; they can lead to severe disruptions in customer services, tarnish brand reputation, and result in financial losses. Unplanned network downtime caused by expired certificates can cost an organization more than $300,000 per hour. By implementing a centralized certificate manager, organizations can gain full visibility into their certificate landscape, allowing for proactive management and significantly reducing the likelihood of unexpected expirations.
Centralization ensures that all certificates, regardless of the issuing CA, are monitored and managed from a single repository. This not only simplifies the process but also eliminates the silos that often lead to oversight and errors. As a result, organizations can enforce consistent policies, automate renewal processes, and respond swiftly to potential issues, effectively preventing outages and ensuring seamless operations
✔️ Teams have more bandwidth
The cybersecurity industry is currently grappling with a significant labor shortage, which makes efficient resource management more critical than ever. The demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals is high, and the gap between supply and demand is widening. It’s estimated that there are more than 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions globally, exacerbating the strain on existing teams.
Centralized and automated certificate management can play a crucial role in alleviating the workload on cybersecurity teams. When certificate management is centralized, it eliminates the inefficiencies of fragmented systems where different teams manage their own certificates in isolation. This not only streamlines processes but also enhances visibility and control across the organization, enabling teams to implement consistent policies and prevent errors.
Centralized and automated certificate management can effectively address the cybersecurity labor shortage because it saves organizations time and improves their overall security posture.
✔️ Teams become more crypto-agile
Crypto agility is the ability to update and change cryptographic processes quickly and efficiently without causing significant disruptions to IT systems. As technology evolves, the need for crypto agility becomes more pressing.
Quantum computing, with its potential to break current cryptographic algorithms, is one of the major drivers for this shift. Organizations must be prepared to transition to quantum-resistant cryptographic methods swiftly. Additionally, the increasing stringency of compliance regulations necessitates rapid adaptation to new cryptographic standards and practices.
Traditionally, transitioning cryptographic processes has been a slow and challenging task. However, organizations can no longer afford such delays. Implementing crypto-agile practices allows for smoother transitions and ensures that security measures remain robust and compliant with evolving standards.
In the future, the ability to make these shifts swiftly will be crucial. Organizations need to establish frameworks that support crypto agility, enabling them to update cryptographic algorithms and processes seamlessly. This proactive approach not only mitigates risks associated with outdated cryptography but also positions organizations to stay ahead in the face of emerging threats and regulatory demands.
✔️ Teams save time and money
Implementing a centralized certificate manager can significantly reduce costs associated with certificate management. By consolidating tools and infrastructure, organizations can streamline operations and reduce the financial burden.
Fewer tools. Using multiple certificate management tools can be expensive and inefficient. Each tool often requires its own set of resources, licenses, and maintenance efforts. By centralizing certificate management, organizations can eliminate redundant tools, leading to direct cost savings. A single, unified platform reduces the complexity and overhead associated with managing disparate systems.
Hours saved. Managing certificates manually or with fragmented tools is labor-intensive and prone to errors. A centralized certificate manager automates many of the routine tasks involved in certificate lifecycle management, such as discovery, monitoring, renewal, and revocation. This automation significantly reduces the burden on IT and security teams, freeing them up to focus on higher-value activities. The reduction in manual workload translates into substantial labor cost savings.
The top 3: What to look for in a certificate manager
Selecting the right certificate manager is crucial for ensuring seamless and secure certificate lifecycle management. Here are three key features to consider.
A “single pane of glass” experience
A robust certificate manager should provide a centralized, unified interface that can capture, log, track, and manage every certificate and certificate type — with no exceptions. This “single pane of glass” approach ensures complete visibility and control over all certificates within the organization, eliminating the need for multiple disparate tools and reducing the risk of oversight.
Flexible deployment options
Flexibility in deployment is essential to accommodate varying organizational needs. A certificate manager should support both cloud and on-premises deployments, as well as offer self-managed or as-a-service options. This flexibility allows organizations to choose the deployment model that best fits their infrastructure, security requirements, and operational preferences.
Backed by PKI and certificate management expertise
PKI expertise is rare and often not feasible to develop in-house. A top-tier certificate manager should come with access to PKI experts and support services. These experts can assist with designing and deploying PKI solutions, structuring CAs, and making informed decisions that align with the organization’s broader security strategy. Having access to this level of expertise ensures that the certificate management system is not only implemented correctly but also optimized for long-term success.
Looking for more? Check out our Certificate Manager Buyer’s Guide and learn how to assess PKI solutions that fit the stage of your business growth.
Centralized certificate management is key
Organizations vary widely in their approaches to certificate management security.
By centralizing certificate management, organizations gain essential visibility into their security landscape, regardless of their current level of maturity. This visibility lays the foundation for scale and security, enabling organizations to identify vulnerabilities, streamline processes, and strengthen their overall security posture moving forward.
Begin your journey
Centralization empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of certificate management and safeguard their digital infrastructures. To learn how Keyfactor can help, contact us here or watch a demo to see the power of centralized certificate management.
