In recent years, the lifespan of certificates has been significantly shortened. Taking Apple, as an example, they have proposed reducing certificate lifespans from 398 to 47 days by 2029. With this dramatic reduction in certificate lifespan, managing certificates from multiple certificate authorities (CAs) can be a hassle and time-consuming, potentially leading to system disruptions as manual processes may be insufficient and expose them to increased chances of error. As a result, the need for a streamlined system to manage certificate authorities (CAs) has never been more critical. This is where centralised enrolment comes into play.
What is Certificate Enrolment?
Certificate enrolment is the process of requesting and obtaining a digital certificate from the Certificate Authority (CA). The enrolment process typically involves the requester generating a key pair, creating a certificate signing request (CSR) containing the public key and identity information, sending it to the certificate authority (CA), and finally receiving the signed certificate from the CA.
The Challenge of Managing Multiple CAs
Most enterprises utilise certificates from multiple certificate authorities (CAs) to serve different purposes. One CA for public-facing TLS/SSL certificates, another for internal PKI needs, and yet another CA for special needs like code signing certificates or device authentication. This segmentation could pose numerous pain points:
- Different interfaces and workflows for different CA
- Redundant management interfaces and administrative overhead
- Exposed to a higher risk of certificate-related outages
- Inconsistent policy enforcement
- Limited cross-CA visibility and incomplete certificate inventory
What is Centralised Enrolment?
Centralised enrolment is a key feature of Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) that unifies the process of managing digital certificates across multiple certificate authorities (CAs). Whether the CAs are internal, public or cloud-based, centralised enrolment brings certificates together in a single platform. It acts as an intermediary between certificate requesters and CAs, ensuring a smooth and standardised enrolment process.
Key components of centralised enrolment:
Centralised Certificate Enrolment Portal
A single interface where users or administrators can request digital certificates regardless of the target certificate authorities (CAs). This eliminates the redundancy of navigating through different interfaces for each certificate authority (CA).
Centralised Certificate Request
Transforms certificate requests into specific formats to accommodate different Certificate Authorities (CAs). It facilitates communication with various CAs using their native protocols, ensuring a standardised enrolment process.
Consistent Policy Enforcement
With centralised enrolment, organisations can implement consistent security policies across all certificates. Moreover, it can enforce standardised requirements such as key lengths, cryptographic algorithms and validity periods before forwarding requests to the certificate authorities (CAs). This consistent policy enforcement reduces security risks associated with improperly configured certificates.
Centralised Inventory
A centralised certificate inventory provides complete visibility of all certificates, including certificate request status, metadata, etc. No more wondering which certificates belong to which CA, everything is in one centralised location.
CA Flexibility
Centralised enrolment enables organisations to gain independence from individual CA providers, thereby providing organisations with the ability to choose or switch certificate authorities (CAs) based on their specific strengths or organisational needs.
With the ever-growing usage of digital certificates across various domains and use cases, managing certificate authorities (CAs) will only become more complex and challenging. Centralised enrolment presents a pragmatic solution to address this challenge by offering a unified space to manage all certificate authorities (CAs), consolidating request processes, standardising security policies, and offering a centralised certificate inventory. This transforms certificate management from a series of disconnected, redundant tasks into a streamlined, centralised and automated process.
Centralised enrolment is part of the Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution, which Netrust offers. Contact us at https://www.netrust.net/contact-us/ to find out more.
Interested in learning more on what are the best practices and tools to streamline SSL Certificate Renewal? Check out this related blog here:
Streamlining SSL Certificate Renewal: Best Practices and Tools
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