As cyber threats evolve and digital trust becomes a frontline defense, organizations across the globe, from San Francisco to Singapore, are rethinking their Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) strategies.
One major shift? The accelerating move toward short-lived TLS certificates. Once valid for years, today’s publicly trusted certificates now top out at 398 days, and by 2029, that number may drop to just 47.
Tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, as part of the CA/B Forum, are pushing for this change, urging businesses to adopt certificate lifecycle automation to keep pace. Is your organization ready?
Benefits of Shorter Public Key Certificate Validity Periods
Shorter certificate validity periods mean more frequent renewals, but also stronger security. A misplaced authentication certificate, for example, will eventually expire to prevent misuse. Reducing the length of time a certificate is valid helps to mitigate key compromise, increases cryptographic agility, and encourages automation.
Addresses private key compromise
Public keys correspond to private keys to help encrypt (and decrypt) important information. When private keys are exposed, attackers can use them to intercept or manipulate data, leading to breaches that could severely impact your business. Some older certificates were much longer-lived, usually between 5 and 10 years, which increased the risk of exposure. For organizations that struggle to keep track of all current and inactive certificates and keys, an unused (but still active) certificate from a decade ago could provide attackers easy access right to the heart of the company servers.
Therefore, shorter certificate lifespans reduce the damage window. Even if attackers have access to them, that access will expire automatically within a year (or less). This revocation of access will be even faster if the breach is known. The CA/Browser Forum encourages certificate authorities (CAs) to revoke compromised certificates within 24 hours of detection. Shorter validity periods mean private key compromise will not impact your business for years without mitigation.
Improves cryptographic agility
The internet and technology are still growing and changing rapidly, bringing new innovations in both cyber threats and security practices. Many organizations are preparing for emerging technologies, like quantum computing. Attackers with access to quantum computing capabilities, for instance, would be able to “crack” modern encryption standards in the blink of an eye, threatening your business’ proprietary data. Emerging fields like post-quantum cryptography intend to build adaptable cryptographic practices that can scale with tech as it changes.
Longer certificate validity periods can cause organizations to delay necessary cryptographic upgrades out of complacency or a lack of resources. Shorter certificate validity, on the other hand, speeds up the adoption of stronger security algorithms and ensures companies implement cryptographic agility strategies. Ensuring your PKI requires shorter lifespans will push your organization to adopt stronger, more up-to-date cryptographic algorithms faster, phasing out vulnerable certificates.
Encourages automation
Although PKI has only grown more intensive to manage as companies and connected systems scale, manual certificate management is still common. Many organizations resist automation, often due to complacency or a belief that manual methods are sufficient. But manual methods are more prone to human error, which can give attackers an all-access pass to sensitive resources. As the number of certificates businesses use increases, manual PKI management can expose public key cryptographic operations to malicious actors.
Shorter certificate lifespans push organizations to adopt automation, especially those that still rely on manual processes. Automation improves reliability and security, eliminating the need to manually track expirations or worry about missed renewals. Tools like Keyfactor Command automatically identify all keys in an organization and keep them properly renewed, preventing unplanned downtime for your business.
Challenges of Shorter Public Key Certificate Lifecycles
While shorter certificate lifecycles provide better security and agility, they aren’t without challenges—mostly for the teams managing them. Shorter validity periods increase renewal frequency, leading to more operational overhead, an increased risk of renewal failures, and more complexity in large organizations.
Increases operational overhead
Shorter certificate lifecycles mean certificates expire more quickly, increasing the renewal frequency. IT and security teams must handle many PKI-related tasks like tracking the expiration dates and validating and renewing certificates. These processes are all time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to errors (especially if rushed). When certificates are not renewed in time, the organization could face outages or other disasters that would impact revenue and reputation.
When managing the lifecycle of keys needs to occur organization-wide more frequently, the increased operational load can overwhelm teams, especially smaller ones. In these instances, automation and supportive tools would be necessary to reduce overhead and prevent outages.
Heightens risk of renewal failures
Certificates that expire quickly also need to be renewed or replaced more frequently, which raises the risk of missed or incorrect renewals. In 2023, an allegedly expired TLS certificate took down Starlink satellites for hours, impacting customers around the world. That same year, GitHub had to revoke stolen certificates and publish new versions before attackers could find a way to misuse them.
Renewals themselves aren’t simple tasks: they involve key generation, domain validation, CA requests, and deployment. Each step needs to be performed for every public key pair and certificate used by an organization before they expire. Your IT and security teams have more responsibilities besides certificate renewals, so when shorter certificate lifecycles are involved, automation and reliable processes are essential to reduce renewal failures. Manual processes and tight deadlines only increase the chances of human error when businesses are dealing with over a quarter million certificates on average.
Adds complexity in large environments
Expired certificates can cause outages that impact your customers and business operations, costing you money and reputation as well. Managing the lifecycle of certificates with shorter validity periods grows more complex the larger the organization’s environment is, which in turn increases the chance of outages due to expired certificates if renewals aren’t well-coordinated.
Large organizations often manage thousands or tens of thousands of digital certificates spanning teams, departments, and geographical locations. Consider the quarter million certificate average: even if those certificate renewals were split evenly and had a year-long validity period, over 20,800 certificates would need to be renewed each month, or approximately 680 per day.
Shorter lifecycles would multiply the number of renewal events, and coordinating these renewals across diverse systems, platforms, and services increases the complexity and the chance of miscommunication or missed renewals.
This complexity raises the risk of certificate-related outages and security gaps, as it’s harder to maintain consistent oversight and timely updates. Without centralized management and automation, tracking the status and expiration of so many public key certificates ranges from extremely difficult to impossible.
Automated Certificate Management for Shorter Certificate Lifecycles
The takeaway here? It’s time to embrace PKI automation and turn short-lived certificates into a cybersecurity advantage.
Rather than viewing frequent renewals of TLS and private keys as a headache, forward-thinking organizations are using them to strengthen their security posture and streamline compliance.
With automated certificate management solutions, you can eliminate the manual overhead, reduce the risk of outages, and gain full visibility into your PKI environment. Automation ensures you stay ahead of expiring certificates, while enabling faster, more secure communication across your network. As certificate validity windows shrink, the time to automate is now. Keyfactor Command streamlines certificate lifecycle management, covering every stage: discovery, issuance, deployment, revocation, and renewal.
