Certificate management enables data protection, compliance, and secure operations. Digital certificates identify and control who can access and operate on your networks. As the number of devices and users grows on a network, managing those digital certificates becomes more difficult. You must constantly reissue, renew, and/or revoke digital certificates to keep your networks safe.
Knowing when to reissue, renew, and/or revoke those digital certificates requires an understanding of the certificate lifecycle. There are five stages in this lifecycle: discovery, request/issuance, deployment, renewal, and retirement.
Why the Certificate Management Lifecycle Matters
Your digital certificates protect your organization against unauthorized users. However, it’s not enough to have a digital certificate. Each certificate must be managed properly.
By understanding a digital certificate’s lifecycle, you can effectively manage those certificates to prevent risk.
The Benefits of Understanding the Certificate Lifecycle
Understanding your certificate lifecycle offers these benefits:
- A stronger security posture.
- Improved compliance.
- Greater insight into how to make the lifecycle management process more efficient.
A Stronger Security Posture
Certificates identify trusted users. A robust certificate lifecycle management process protects you from risk because a weak link at any stage of the lifecycle can leave you open to attack.
Improved Compliance
There are more and more regulations and standards regarding digital certificates and their management. Understanding every stage in the lifecycle allows you to maintain compliance because you’ll understand what’s necessary at each stage and allocate the necessary resources to it.
Greater Insights to Drive Efficiency
With a five-stage lifecycle, the process of managing digital certificates offers plenty of opportunities to become more efficient. However, you can only optimize certificate management if you recognize the inherent challenges at each stage. By familiarizing yourself with what happens at each stage, you can streamline processes to reduce the burden on your IT team.
Stage 1: Certificate Discovery
It’s 9 AM–do you know where all your digital certificates are?
Managing your certificates effectively requires certificate discoverability. Knowing where all your digital certificates are means that you can avoid outages, service disruptions, breaches, and other issues that prevent your teams from being productive. Unmonitored or expired certificates put you at risk for those problems, and a comprehensive inventory addresses those gaps.
Certificate discovery identifies, manages, and secures public and private digital certificates and keys across an organization. It’s a process in which you track down and catalog those certificates to create an inventory of cryptosecurity standards and expiration dates for a holistic view of certificates and devices in your environment.
Automated scanning tools accelerate the process and also improve its accuracy. Certificate inventory management tools help you build an up-to-date inventory.
Stage 2: Certificate Request/Issuance
The second part of the certificate management lifecycle is certificate requests or issuing certificates.
A certificate authority (CA) issues a digital certificate to verify a client’s or server’s identity. The CA can issue these certificates because it’s a trusted party. When it issues a certificate, the CA gives it an expiration date. After that date, the CA will no longer recognize the certificate.
To obtain a certificate, you send a request to a CA. Your request will include your distinguished name (DN), a unique identifier for each user or host, your public key, and your signature. The CA checks your signature using your public key, and then verifies your identity. Once that process takes place, you’ll receive a signed digital certificate containing your DN, your public key, the CA’s DN, and the CA’s signature. You’ll store that certificate in your key database.
Certificate requests can be influenced by domain ownership verification and compliance requirements. If you don’t have all of the correct information when you submit a request to the CA, the CA might not be able to issue a certificate, or the certificate might not be valid. Presenting correct data to the CA avoids the risk of outages and/or misconfigurations.
Stage 3: Certificate Deployment
The third stage of the certificate management lifecycle involves deploying the certificate. In this context, “deployment” means installing the certificate in the appropriate system or application. Typically, teams install certificates on web servers and workstations, but IoT devices also need digital certificates to protect your networks from risk.
When deploying certificates, you should have two security goals in mind: minimizing downtime and setting the proper permissions. Minimizing downtime helps everyone get back to work faster, while setting the proper permissions allows them to access what they need safely.
There are two common errors in certificate deployment:
- Not allocating the right amount of resources to the project, i.e., it could take more of your workforce’s time and effort to complete this project than you thought.
- A lack of planning and tracking. If you’re not keeping track of where you’re deploying certificates, it will be more challenging to manage them. Also, if you don’t deploy enough certificates, you’re putting your enterprise at risk.
Stage 4: Certificate Renewal
Your certificates all have expiration dates. Renewing them allows users to continue accessing trusted applications and systems safely. By staying on top of the renewal process, you ensure business continuity and minimize the risk of security threats.
One of the challenges for IT teams is that the certificate validity period has become shorter and shorter. Shorter certificate validity periods ideally limit your risk, but it can also create headaches for teams trying to manage a multitude of certificates within the enterprise.
That’s where automation comes in. Automating certificate management reduces the burden on your IT team. Renewing certificates is a repetitive task that can lead to burnout and fatigue. When it’s automated, your team can work on strategic, impactful security work. They’ll be more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs and want to stay on your team.
Stage 5: Certificate Retirement
The phrase “all good things must come to an end” applies to digital certificates. If they use less robust encryption methods, it’s time to retire them to avoid exploitation.
If you’ve got a multitude of digital certificates, the best way to discover which ones should be retired is to run regular discovery audits. Again, automation is crucial here. It saves time when there are too many certificates to manage manually, and you want to avoid confusion or errors that could compromise security.
Secure Your Certificate Lifecycle by Automating Processes
Visibility and authority are essential to maintaining a secure public key infrastructure environment. They’re also crucial to the future foundations of cryptography. You can achieve visibility and authority with a firm understanding of each stage of the certificate lifecycle.
Certificate management doesn’t have to be tedious or time-consuming. A centralized, automated process allows your teams to focus on the work that matters most. Call in the Keyfactor experts to automate and centralize your certificate lifecycle management today.
