Trust is fundamental for the success of businesses online. Digital certificates establish that trust by authenticating the identity of websites, devices, users, and servers. That facilitates secure electronic communication and data exchange. Digital certificates, however, are not pieces of paper that you keep in your folder and forget about. Once they are deployed, there needs to be a mechanism to monitor and manage the lifecycle. A trusted certificate manager automates and simplifies the certificate management process and ensures the security of your business environment.
Each digital certificate has a specific validity period. For example, SSL/TLS’s lifespan is for 13 months. Its lifecycle starts with enrollment, where a trusted certification authority (CA) issues it to an applicant after confirming their identity, and often ends with its renewal. To continue using it, you must renew it before its validity period ends.
The certificate lifecycle management process is complex. It means managing every lifecycle stage, including enrollment, validation, revocation, and renewal. PKI management tools enable you to manage all your digital certificates efficiently. It saves your time and resources as well.
Why Leverage a Trusted Certificate Manager for Certificate Management
Businesses use hundreds of digital certificates to secure their business environment. Keeping a watch over them using manual tools and processes can result in failing to notice a vulnerability or the upcoming renewal date. It will cause data breaches and outages. If that happens, your business will suffer immense loss. To prevent that, it would be best if you tapped into a trusted certificate manager for the certificate lifecycle management process.
There are innumerable benefits to using this PKI management tool to manage certificates deployed throughout your organization. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Automation of Process
One of the main advantages is automation. It automates and streamlines the entire lifecycle management process. This helps to prevent security breaches because your certificate will immediately be renewed or replaced if it has expired or revoked. A data breach can happen because a business fails to renew or replace an expired security certificate. A trusted certificate manager prevents that from happening by automatically renewing or replacing certificates.
Secure Repository and Central View
The certificate manager automates your certificate management lifecycle process and offers a secure, encrypted repository to store your certificates and their associated keys. Because of that, you get a central view of your certificates – with full visibility – enabling you to track all of them from one interface effectively.
Improves Security of the Digital Environment
There is always the risk of mismanagement if you are managing certificates manually. It leads to downtime because of misconfigured, revoked, and expired certificates. That erodes the trust of your customers and clients in your systems, networks, and servers. With the right certificate manager, you eliminate the risk of business interruption due to mismanagement.
Choose a Trusted Certificate Manager
Make sure to choose a PKI management tool to manage the entire lifecycle of your certificate. As they automate the process, it ensures the renewal of certificates before expiration, in addition to helping receive a certificate and its deployment. For example, with Sectigo’s certificate manager, you can discover, install, manage, and renew all your certificates. It offers you the benefit of end-to-end management from a single dashboard.
