In an increasingly digitized world, the expansion of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) has become a critical component for securing data, communications, and identities. And it is not just PKI that has significantly grown either. The world has both evolved, adapted and harnessed the explosion of IT technology and tools throughout the last few years.
Often, there is an age-old issue where an asset that helps us daily can also become a hindrance; for example, organizational network ports or user devices. They can be, and are, valuable tools, but like all systems and devices in an organization, you need the right solution to manage and secure everything.
Managing Digital Certificates
The problem for many will be that from the early adoption of digital certificates, it seemed sufficient enough to record them on a spreadsheet or note log with minimal number of details, such as the server and expiry date. But the explosion of the number of devices and certificates has increased so significantly, that managing them is an entirely different proposition and must be tackled appropriately.
You see, the problem isn’t just about what certificates, where they are and when they expire – that can be fixed by using certificate inventory platforms – the bigger problem is provisioning them in the first place and making sure that the right certificates are provisioned to the right user or device with the right privileges.
The management of certificates for your organization can be just as complex regardless of the number of users, locations, and devices. That said, you also have to consider multiple locations, countries, devices, and even local/home network security.
Some organizations may possess their own in-house Certificate Authority (CA), but this is not only an expensive implementation that must be set up, managed and maintained, but there are additional costs involved to running a CA, plus the personnel required and the fact that it will not be a fully automated solution, and does not support public trust.
Throughout many organizations, there is a growing pressure to automate, secure and simplify as many processes as possible. So, wouldn’t it be great to have a solution in place from a trusted CA that works directly with your Active Directory and that chosen CA’s platform automatically checks certificate requests against policies, then deploy the certificates without any IT resource involvement? Well, this is exactly what GlobalSign’s Certificate Automation Manager does. It takes the day-to-day burden of managing certificate requests, approvals, provisioning and deployment, and combines with the ability to do maintain against strict, secure policies and procedures to avoid human error and reduce the likelihood of malicious activities.
Reduce the burden and save time with Certificate Automation Manager
Automating and simplifying the process is one thing, but you also need to consider other aspects of the new working environment. Many organizations now have a remote and hybrid workforce and supporting both Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and mobile devices can be complicated. How do you securely protect these devices, whilst maintaining a clean list of authorized devices? Ideally, you do not want to have to purchase duplicate certificates for each user with multiple devices, so support for Microsoft Intune to provide mobile device roaming for certificates is necessary.
Improve Business Strategy and Infrastructure with Certificate Automation Manager
Regardless as to how complicated your infrastructure is, it is vital to have access to automated scheduled reporting to provide updates on your certificates and provide valuable strategic data to confirm that the right certificates are being provisioned to the right users, devices and endpoints.
Ultimately, your organizational digital certificate management can go from an intensive manual in-house process that comes with a degree of risk, to a fully automated solution that is supported by GlobalSign. As a solution, Certificate Automation Manager covers:
- Client authentication - enables users to connect services and apps without passwords
- Secure Email – Reduce IT admin overheads by enabling secure email automatically without user or IT intervention, and eliminates the risk of emails not being secured with S/MIME certificates
- Digital Signatures - implement digital signatures seamlessly across all domains and companies within the organization
- Network Security – Protect thousands of network endpoints efficiently through multiple enrollment options
- SSL/TLS certificates - provision required certificates to your web servers instantly to ensure that they are protected and valid
Certificate management doesn’t need to be complicated, and our team of engineers will work with you, accounting for your specific needs and infrastructure before proposing the right design and solution for you.
