Time exhaustive: The digital archaeology of certificate management, when conducted via spreadsheets, transforms employees into data spelunkers, lost in a labyrinth of rows and columns, a task that drains countless hours. One can imagine the frustration of manually combing through thousands of spreadsheet rows to manage digital certificates – a task that inevitably devours valuable staff hours
The necessity of automation in Certificate Lifecycle Management
Prioritising certificates, setting up alerts for expirations and revocations, and ensuring accuracy is nearly impossible without automation.
Inefficient policy enforcement:
A certificate management policy, devoid of clear issuance and ownership tracking, transforms from a tool of security into a hollow document, unenforceable and un-auditable.
Without pinpointing the origin and custodians of certificates and keys, any attempt to implement or audit a policy becomes a performance without an audience, a show of control that lacks substance.
Blurred visibility:
Manual certificate handling casts a shadow over your digital landscape, leaving certificates adrift and unseen. This enforced obscurity renders proactive expiration management a near impossibility, transforming potential service disruptions into inevitable realities.
Like invisible threads woven through your infrastructure, untracked certificates, born of manual management, lurk undetected. This covert existence dramatically elevates the threat of sudden expirations and the cascading outages they trigger.
Insecure private key storage:
Without visibility into certificate ownership, private keys are frequently scattered and unprotected, rather than centrally managed. This decentralised storage leaves organisations susceptible to data breaches. Unclear certificate ownership prevents the secure, centralised management of private keys, leaving them exposed and raising the likelihood of data breaches.
Solution(sample image taken from our lab):
Venafi is a one-stop solution to the above-mentioned challenges. It automates certificate discovery, inventory, and certificate lifecycle management. It provides a single pane of glass view, replacing the tedious manual search with instant, searchable access to all certificate data.
On Venafi’s platform, users are able to automate certificate prioritisation, expiration alerts, and revocation processes, eliminating human error. It enforces policy-driven automation, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
Venafi provides comprehensive visibility into certificate and key issuance and ownership, enabling organisations to implement and audit enterprise-wide certificate management policies effectively. It enforces policy compliance through automated workflows and real-time monitoring.
Closing:
Though the prospect of discovering every certificate can feel overwhelming, the right tools can make the process surprisingly streamlined.
Get started and embark on automating Digital Certificate Lifecycle Management for your organisation. Reach out to us today.
Or interested in learning more? Check out this related blog here:
Beyond Basics: Optimising Certificate Lifecycle Management for Future Security
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