Unless you want to expose your organisation to the risk of fraud, compromised data, and non-compliance fines and penalties, certificate management is a necessary evil.
But here’s the good news: you don’t have to keep your employees busy going through hundreds of certificates manually as the process can be easily automated with a Certificate Automation Manager solution.
Certificate Automation Manager handles everything in the certificate lifecycle, from generating the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) all the way to renewing and revoking certificates. Not to mention, it scales with your company as your certificate management needs grow, effectively future proofing your business operations.
This guide explores the benefits of certificate management automation for business growth.
What is a Certificate Automation Manager?
A Certificate Automation Manager is a solution that enables organisations to streamline certificate lifecycles. This includes generating, renewing, sorting, revoking, and protecting digital certificates automatically.
Certificate Automation Manager frees up your IT resources by making certificate management less complex, allowing your IT team to focus on more strategic tasks and processes. Once the solution is deployed, your IT team just needs to make some configurations and set rules. Moving forward, the platform typically only requires minor tweaks and customisations, as well as setting access permission controls.
What is a Digital Certificate?
A digital certificate is a cryptographic file that’s used to authenticate the identity of a user, device, server, or organisation online. Digital certificates use encryption protocols to secure online communications and protect organisational networks from malicious threats with a two-key system.
The certificate’s public key must be matched with the corresponding private key so that the message’s receiver can see its contents.
Digital certificates are issued by Certificate Authorities (CAs).
What are Certificate Authorities?
Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the bodies responsible for validating organisations, approving Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs), and issuing digital certificates for verified entities. They’re responsible for maintaining the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a set of rules and protocols that controls the generation of digital certificates for users and devices for the purpose of protecting sensitive information.
Some of the key responsibilities of CAs include:
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Issuing, renewing, and revoking digital certificates
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Validating and authenticating identities
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Maintaining Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) for compromised certificates
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Ensuring compliance with security and data privacy regulations and standards
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Controlling access permissions for data protection
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Encrypting online communications
What are the Challenges of Traditional Certificate Management?
There are many obstacles and inefficiencies associated with manual certificate lifecycle management processes. These include:
Resource Allocation
Conventional certificate management takes away from your team’s time, which can affect their productivity. They need to dedicate time and effort to managing and sorting certificates with basic tools. And as the number of certificates increases, their jobs get harder, distracting them from their core duties.
Recruiting and Hiring Overheads
As your certificate management needs grow, you’ll need to hire more IT team members to handle the manual certificate management processes, adding to your company’s expenses.
Human Error
Due to the redundant nature of certificate management tasks, your staff are more likely to make mistakes. For example, certificates could easily exceed their expiration date without anyone noticing.
Sorting is Very Difficult
Manual certificate sorting requires a lot of effort as certificates need to be prioritised based on the criticality of the data they protect and their expiration dates. Such a process can be challenging to do manually and is very sensitive to human error. It also poses security risks for your organisation.
How Does Certificate Automation Manager Future Proof Your Business?
Certificate Automation Manager future proofs your business by offering unmatched scalability, flexibility, and adaptability.
Scalability
Certificate Automation Manager platforms future-proof your organisation by enabling seamless scalability in accordance with your business’s growing needs.
Traditional certificate management can be very challenging to scale; as the number of certificates you need to issue and manage grows, your team will find it hard to catch up. You’ll end up hiring more people in your team to carry out these mundane tasks. In the long run, this approach is costly and inefficient.
Automated certificate management, on the other hand, can be scaled up effortlessly to accommodate the higher volume of certificates.
Flexibility
Certificate Automation managers are very flexible—they can be customised and fine-tuned according to your specific requirements. For example, you can change the access permissions for a specific role and propagate the rule across your entire organisation.
Additionally, Certificate Automation Managers can be adapted to changing regulations and certificate validity periods.
For instance, recently, Google proposed shortening the certificate validity period to 90 days instead of one year for security purposes. Such a disruptive change can wreak havoc on manual certificate management processes, but with an automated certificate manager, you just need to make a few tweaks to accommodate the changes.
Certificate Automation Manager in Action: Use Cases
Some of the common use cases of Certificate Automation Manager include:
Revoking Compromised Certificates Automatically
Managing certificates manually can make it challenging to quickly detect and revoke compromised certificates, leading to severe consequences that range from data loss to complete business failure.
With a Certificate Automation Manager, compromised certificates are identified and revoked automatically, ensuring that the attack is contained, and the rest of your network remains safe from cyberattacks.
Faster Onboarding
When onboarding new hires, you need to issue new certificates for them and set their access permissions. This process can be time-consuming, especially if your organisation hires new employees on a regular basis.
Certificate Automation Manager solutions enable more streamlined onboarding by automatically issuing certificates for new hires and devices, as well as setting their access permissions automatically based on their role and department in the company.
Threat Detection and Hunting
A Certificate Automation Manager isn’t just a productivity booster—it’s also considered a part of your cybersecurity strategy. Security is built right into the core of Certificate Automation Manager solutions—they monitor your networks and certificates in real time, detect unusual behaviour, and send alerts and recommendations to proactively deal with threats.
For instance, if an unauthorised device attempts to access your network, it will be blocked, and your team will be notified immediately. This approach is also effective at maximising IoT endpoint security.
How to Implement Certificate Automation Manager in Your Organisation
To effectively deploy a Certificate Automation Manager in your company, consider the following best practices:
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Assess Your Current Setup. Evaluate the certificate management process to spot bottlenecks and identify areas where automation will create the biggest impact in terms of security and efficiency. Create a deployment roadmap that revolves around these areas.
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Use a Centralised Certificate Automation Solution. A centralised Certificate Automation Manager platform serves as the meeting point of your Certificate Authority and the active directory, which drastically accelerates certificate issuance and renewal.
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Utilise Monitoring Tools. Deploy real-time monitoring tools to stay on top of expired and revoked certificates, as well as alert admins of potential security problems or impending expirations.
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Maintain Compliance. When implementing a solution like Certificate Automation Manager, make sure that your certificate lifecycle operations are designed in compliance with different regulatory standards. Carrying out regular internal and external audits is also important to assess the status quo and take corrective actions to avoid non-compliance penalties.
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Documentation and Training. Document your certificate automation workflows and best practices to ensure repeatability and train your team members on how to make the most out of the automation solution.
Final Words
Certificate automation provides numerous benefits for your business, both in the short and long term. You’ll be able to drastically improve efficiency and security; while also enjoying the future proofing that a Certificate Automation Manager provides in terms of scalability and flexibility.
Check out our free White Paper (link to White Paper) to learn more about the future of automation in cybersecurity and how you can leverage it in your business.
