Digital certificates play a major role in enterprise security as they protect everything from websites and applications to IoT devices and cloud workloads.
But large organizations are now juggling with thousands of certificates across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and managing them has never been more challenging. To make it even harder, certificate lifespans are reduced to 398 days and are expected to shrink even more in the coming years. At this pace, spreadsheets and manual reminders are no longer a realistic option.
The challenges extend beyond compliance alone. To IT and security teams, the question now is not whether to automate, but how quickly they can transition to stay secure, resilient, and compliant at scale.
Why Manual Certificate Management No Longer Works
The manual approach to certificate management no longer works well in the rapid, complex IT world. Many organizations still handle their certificates manually, a method which will soon become impossible to manage since digital ecosystems are developing rapidly.
Without centralized visibility, teams lack a clear picture of where the certificates are deployed, who owns them and when they expire. This can be impossible to track in a dynamic environment, where the lifespan of each certificate can be two or three hours in practice.
Even the most disciplined teams may overlook certificates. One missed renewal may lead to unplanned service outages, application downtime or even user disruptions. In some situations, expired certificates have resulted in breaches or compliance violations because of broken encryption or failed authentication. And as enterprises expand into cloud, DevOps, and IoT, this problem only grows.
The Growing Complexity of Modern IT
Modern IT is no longer defined by a single data center. Enterprises now operate certificates in:
- Multi-cloud deployments like AWS, Azure, GCP
- DevOps pipelines in which CI/CD certificates are implemented into their workflows.
- IoT ecosystems with thousands of connected devices
- Hybrid IT environments spanning legacy systems and edge
This makes it almost impossible to have full visibility and control with manual processes.
The Risks of Manual Certificate Management
Here are some of the major security and business risks associated with manual certificate management:
Wasted IT Resources
Managing certificates and renewals manually requires a significant amount of time and staff, which otherwise could be used on creating strategic security initiatives.
Downtime and Outages
Missed certificate renewals can result in outages that can fail customer transactions, employee productivity or integrations. This can create a negative effect on your brand name.
Compliance Challenges
Expired or misconfigured certificates can cause compliance violations under frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR. These violations can result in financial penalties and reputational damage.
Security Gaps
Attackers are always looking for expired or weakly managed certificates to tamper communications, input malware, or impersonate trusted services. Manual management can leave too many openings for exploitation.
These risks make it clear that manual management can’t keep up, and automation is what everyone should adopt.
Why Automation Is the Only Scalable Answer
Automated certificate management is the most effective solution to eliminate risks and get an end-to-end solution that discovers, issues, renews and revokes the digital certificate at scale.
Automation can be achieved through several methods like agent-based or agentless discovery tools. These tools constantly scan infrastructure to identify every certificate in cloud environments, containers, load balancers, and legacy systems. Issuing and renewing are commonly accomplished via REST APIs, SCEP, or ACME SSL to dynamically request and install certificates. There are also numerous solutions that can work with CI/CD pipelines, configuration management tools, and secrets managers to enable DevOps workflows.
A 2021 DigiCert survey confirmed that enterprises are operating more than 50,000 certificates, and more than two-thirds report that their systems have gone offline because of unexpected expirations. Not only does automation eliminate these risks, but also provides the assurance that the policy requirements for internal and external are met.
With automation embedded into the certificate ecosystem, organizations can achieve scalability in a secure manner, less overhead in operations, and maintain visibility and control over their digital trust infrastructure.
Core Benefits of Certificate Automation
Automated certificate lifecycles help to save time and money. The following are a few benefits explaining why every business should enable automation.
Automated Discovery
Automation scans through the entire IT environment in cloud and on-premises infrastructure and IoT devices to identify all existing certificates, including those that may have been deployed without central management. This assists in discovering the unknown or rogue certificates that might have been brought by shadow IT, third-party vendors or decentralized teams.
Increasing visibility into all certificates deployed within the organization will enable the security and IT teams to more effectively evaluate risks and manage their public key infrastructure footprint.
Centralized Management
Once all the certificates are discovered automation can bring them into a centralized certificate management system. IT teams and security teams can manage all the certificates from a single dashboard to monitor certificate health, track expiration timelines and enable consistent security policies.
It also helps with governance and compliance by generating audit reports maintaining regulatory compliance across hybrid and multi cloud environments.
Automated Lifecycles
Certificate lifecycles including issuance, renewal, installation, and revocation are fully automated. Expiring certificates are renewed before they cause disruptions, and new certificates can be provisioned and deployed instantly. This can be especially helpful for SSL certificates, as industry trends continue to shorten certificate lifespans.
This reduces the risk of unwanted expirations and security errors and frees up IT and security teams from time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
Business Impact
Automated certificate management delivers clear operational and strategic value to business by delivering:
- More secure posture by eliminating outdated or misconfigured certificates.
- Reduced expenses through fewer failures and human interventions.
- Better uptime and reliability of customer-facing services and internal systems.
How to Choose the Right Automation Solution
When considering automation platforms, everyone must focus on:
- Scalability between multi-cloud and hybrid platforms.
- Protocol support, such as ACME, API and DevOps toolchain integrations.
- Compliance readiness with in-built reporting and audit features.
- Proactive monitoring, which provides notifications of expired or misconfigured certificates.
Conclusion
Digital trust has become a foundation of modern business, and it can no longer be sustained at scale with manual certificate management processes. With shorter certificate lifespan and complex IT environments, the potential risks associated with outages, compliance failures, and security gaps will continue to rise.
Automated certificate management can help build scalable digital trust while assuring all applications, devices, and services are grow safely, minimizing the operational burden, and ensuring constant visibility and control. Companies that embrace automated certificate management today will not only remain ahead of compliance requirements but can also develop resilience to changes in the digital landscape.
Read more:
The Rise of Automated Certificate Management: Simplifying Security at Scale