Building a Secure, Scalable, and Outage-Proof Digital Trust Foundation
From outages to breaches, digital certificates are the gatekeepers of trust that hold everything together. Whether it’s securing communications, protecting web servers, enabling Zero Trust architectures, or ensuring application integrity, public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificate lifecycle management (CLM) are no longer optional; they’re foundational.
Yet, even as organizations scale their digital footprint, many still grapple with outdated, manual processes for certificates issued across environments. The result? Certificate validity errors, service outages, compliance failures, and growing attack surfaces.
This guide explores the challenges, risks, requirements, and best practices of certificate lifecycle management and how your organization can succeed with a modern approach.
The State of Digital Certificates: Risks of Poor CLM
Despite being mission-critical, digital certificates are often treated as an afterthought. Here are some of the top challenges facing modern teams:
1. Lack of Visibility
Most organizations have no centralized inventory of certificates. Without visibility:
- Certificate expirations cause outages (remember the Microsoft Teams outage in 2020?).
- Rogue or shadow certificates open the door to MITM attacks.
- Root and intermediate certs might be outdated or compromised.
2. Shorter Certificate Lifespans
TLS/SSL validity periods are shrinking fast.
The days of multi-year TLS certificates are over. Driven by browser vendors and industry alliances like the Certificate Authorities (CA)/Browser Forum, TLS/SSL certificates now have shorter lifespans, and there’s no sign of slowing down.
What Changed:
- Pre-2018: TLS certificates could last 3–5 years.
- 2018: Max certificate validity reduced to 825 days.
- 2020: Apple, Chrome, and Firefox enforced a max of 398 days.
- 2024+: Industry discussions are moving toward 90-day certificates as a baseline.
Why This Matters:
- Security: Shorter validity reduces risk exposure if keys are compromised.
- Automation Push: Frequent renewals mean organizations must renew certificates automatically.
- Revocation Doesn’t Work: With short certs, reliance on certificate revocation lists (CRLs) decreases.
- Cloud & DevOps Fit: Dynamic workloads benefit from automated, short-lived certs (e.g., Let’s Encrypt, cert-manager).
What is the risk if you don’t adapt? Certificates renewed manually have a higher chance of outages, audit gaps, and reputation damage.
The Risk if You Don’t Adapt
Manual certificate tracking simply can’t keep up. Without automation:
- Renewal Failures → Outages
- Non-Compliance → Audit Gaps
- User Trust Errors → Reputation Damage
What’s Next?
Expect major CAs and platforms to normalize 90-day or even 30-day lifespans, especially in:
- Cloud-native apps
- Kubernetes environments
- Zero Trust architectures
Short-lived certificates are the future. And the future is arriving faster than most orgs are ready for.
3. Manual Management is Still the Norm
Excel sheets, ticket queues, and emails are poor tools for managing certificate signing requests (CSR), tracking certificates issued, and ensuring timely renewals. Human error often leads to missed expirations or insecure configurations.
4. Cloud and DevOps Complexity
Dynamic environments like Kubernetes, ephemeral workloads, and CI/CD pipelines demand automated provisioning. Without it, keeping code signing certificates, SSL certs, and internal certs updated is nearly impossible.
5. Compliance and Audit Pressures
Frameworks like PCI-DSS, NIST, and ISO 27001 require strict cryptographic hygiene, including secure access controls and role-based access control (RBAC) for certificate issuance and management. Poor certificate governance can lead to non-compliance and reputational risk.
Real-World Risks of Poor Certificate Hygiene
Example: In April 2023, a certificate expiration issue caused a Starlink outage when a ground station certificate wasn’t renewed in time, proving how a single expired certificate can disrupt essential services.
What Should Certificate Management Look Like?
Here are the common requirements every mature CLM strategy must address:
1. Discovery: Automatically detect all certificates across environments, CAs, and platforms (cloud, containers, on-prem).
2. Centralized Inventory: Maintain a searchable repository of certificate metadata:
- Expiry dates
- Key types and lengths
- Algorithms
- Issuers and endpoints
3. Policy Enforcement: Set and enforce policies for:
- Minimum key lengths (e.g., RSA 2048+ or ECC)
- Trusted issuers
- Renewal thresholds
- Approved cipher suites
4. Automated Issuance & Renewal: Use integrations with internal or public CAs to automate:
- Enrollment
- Provisioning
- Renewal
- Revocation
5. Alerting & Reporting: Real-time alerts for expiring or non-compliant certificates. Dashboards and audit logs to support compliance.
6. Secure Storage: Ensure private keys are never exposed. Use HSMs, secure enclaves, or vaults to protect sensitive cryptographic materials.
Best Practices for Modern Certificate Lifecycle Management
- Adopt CLM Tools or Platforms
- Embrace Automation
- Segment and Prioritize
- Use Short-Lived Certificates (where possible)
- Establish a Certificate Authority Strategy
- Train Your Teams
How to Implement Certificate Lifecycle Management (Step-by-Step)
Modernizing your certificate lifecycle doesn’t require a forklift upgrade. Start with these steps:
- Audit Your Current EnvironmentInventory all certificates issued across systems and identify high-risk gaps (e.g., unknown expiration dates, wildcards, self-signed certs).
- Map Dependencies and OwnershipClarify which teams own which certs and where certificates impact uptime, authentication, or trust.
- Define CLM PoliciesSet clear rules on issuance, key sizes, approved certificate authorities (CAs), and renewal processes.
- Choose Your ToolsEvaluate CLM tools that integrate with your environment and drive automation.
- Automate in PhasesBegin with non-critical certs, then expand automation to production environments.
- Monitor and Improve ContinuouslyUse dashboards, reporting, and security metrics to evolve your certificate maturity over time.
Why CLM Matters: Building Digital Trust with Automation
Whether you’re defending against breaches or passing audits, digital trust is a competitive differentiator. Certificate management is the beating heart of that trust.
Done right, certificate lifecycle management:
- Reduces risk
- Improves reliability
- Enhances compliance
- Enables Zero Trust architectures
- Builds long-term security resilience
Don’t wait for an outage or breach to take CLM seriously. Start your journey today and build a future where certificates are assets, not liabilities.
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Unlike most Privileged Account Management solutions, Segura® also helps you manage your SSL/TLS certificates and protect and manage your machine identities, all through the same easy-to-use interface.
