“SSL/TLS connections are a client/server protocol and can have two types of certificates; all of them have a server-side certificate that secures the connection and gives browsers some assurance that they’re talking to the right website. But these connections can also have client-side certificates that are used to mutually authenticate the client that initiated the connection. These ‘client’ certificates are becoming more and more prevalent in IT environments with the explosion of DevOps, microservices, cloud architectures and IoT. They often outnumber their traditional server-side counterparts by a factor of 1,000 or more but are often a ‘blind spot’ in an organization, as most traditional cert management tools focus almost exclusively on server-side certs.” said Ted Shorter, CTO of secure digital identity management firm Keyfactor.