Visibility is crucial for effective certificate management. Without it, it is difficult to have control over all the certificates installed in applications, servers, websites, and networks. The only way to gain visibility is through comprehensive certificate discovery, which is a process of discovering all certificates deployed across the enterprise network. When you are able to detect the location of your certificates, it becomes easier to monitor them and ensure their validity.
Why Is Certificate Discovery Important?
Digital certificates, like electronic ID cards, help authenticate users and prevent security breaches. So, it becomes essential to detect their cryptographic changes or compromises in real time. And certificates are only valid for a certain period of time. They need to be renewed or replaced before their expiration date. Certificate discovery, therefore, is a key step in certificate management. It leads to certificate visibility.
It is only when details of certificates are viewable, you can track and find out which one is compromised or about to expire. This will enable you to replace or renew it quickly before you experience an outage due to mismanagement. In addition to that, it will also ensure that the certificate is compliant with the necessary regulatory guidelines and organizational policy.
As organizations use thousands of digital certificates to secure their business environment, manual handling of the certificate discovery process comes with several drawbacks. It is time-consuming, and there is the risk of human errors, which can result in incorrect documentation. The use of a security certificate management system simplifies it and reduces errors, in addition to seamless discovery of every single certificate. Here are 3 ways to achieve improved certificate discovery.
1. Make It Central to Certificate Management
Do not think of certificate management as a two-step process – deployment and renewal. Certificate discovery is an essential step after the deployment of certificates. You must make it central to your certificate management process, as you cannot manage a certificate’s lifecycle if you do not know where it is located.
2. Tap Into Automated Scanning Tools
Automated scanning tools scan your entire business environment to detect all certificates – both public and private – issued by multiple certificate authorities (CAs). Once a certificate is discovered, you can see its expiry date, issuing CA, and other vital details. Instead of manual search and detection, tap into automated scanning tools for effective discovery of certificates.
3. Create Certificate Inventory
The creation of the certificate inventory makes it easy for you to view details of all your certificates. It makes them available on a single central certificate inventory page. That helps in the identification of certificates that are about to expire, and the detection of vulnerabilities.
Certificate inventory offers you visibility into all your certificates. Once you gain that, implement a monitoring mechanism. Again, instead of doing it manually using spreadsheets, it is best to leverage the security certificate management system. It offers you the advantage of automated certificate lifecycle management. You can seamlessly detect certificates and then filter and categorize them.
Accept the Help of Security Certificate Management System
The effectiveness of your certificate management process depends on certificate discovery. To ensure the discovery of all certificates deployed across the business environment, consider a security certificate management system, such as Sectigo Certificate Manager. It will help in the search and detection of your certificates. And, with its help, you can also manage them from a single interface.
