Save Time and Money

Managing certificates can be a huge time sink. Not to mention lost money and productivity when one expires unexpectedly.

As technologies continue to evolve certificates issued by both private and public certificate authorities will be used more and more. At some point you will have to determine a method for tracking these certificates as they will become very important to your business. Expired certificates and can cause downtime and lost revenue while compromised certificate keys can cause compliance issues as well as lost public trust in your business. Have a good process to track and manage these certificates is going to be crucial to your business. In this article we will talk about the differences between a manual solution vs an automated solution like CertMS.

Lets first take a look at the Manual process.

A manual process for certificate track has many steps needed to be perform consistently by one or many people. We will go over a manual process for certificate management in a later article but for now here is a quick summary of what is needed.

  • Certificate Issuance
    • Once a certificate is issued and administrator will need to approve it and document all information about the certificate
  • Certificate Tracking
    • Once a certificate is issued, based on the certificate template, it may be used on multiple web servers if they are load balanced. The administrator has to be very diligent to make sure every server where the certificate lives is documented so that it can be replaced later.
  • Certificate Renewal
    • Certificates at some point will need to be renewed and as the expiration of certificates gets shorter and shorter the administrator will need to be very diligent about renewing the certificates and getting them on the appropriate servers
  • Certificate Reissuance
    • When a cert if compromised or becomes corrupted it my be necessary to have the certificate reissued. The administrator will need to reissue the certificate, revoke the old certificate and make sure to document all information about the new certificate. Previous documentation will help the administrator know which servers the reissued certificate needs to be on.
  • Certificate Expiration
    • While this goes with certificate renewal it if very important that the administrator tracks all certificates closely to know when they are going to expire. Expired certificates can cause downtime and lost revenue if not handled in a timely manner.

As you can see this is a lot of work for a single person and may even require an entire team or multiple teams. Now that we know what it kind of takes for the manual approach let’s look at the pros and cons of a manual process vs an automated process like CertMS.

Manual Process

Pros:

  • Low to no actual seen cost for any specialized software
  • Simple to implement and maintain
  • Can be customized to fit very specific organizational needs
  • No dependencies on external systems or vendors

Cons:

  • Very time-consuming and labor-intensive
  • Prone to human error (e.g. misfiling, incorrect data entry)
  • Limited Scalability (may not be able to handle large volumes of certificates)
  • May require frequent updates and maintenance
  • For larger organizations could require an entire person or team to implement

Automated Solution

Pros:

  • Scalable and can handle large volumes of certificates
  • Reduces manual error and increases accuracy
  • Automates routine tasks
    • Certificate expiration alerting
    • Certificate pending alerting
    • Certificate issued alerting
  • Provides real time reporting on certificates
  • Integrates with common Certificate Authorities
  • Monitors servers for Certificates added to them

Cons:

  • Requires upfront investment in software licensing and implementation
  • May require ongoing subscription fees or support fees
  • Can be complex to setup and configure
  • May require additional IT resources to manage the system

When to choose an Automated Solution

  1. Large Scale Certificate Management: If your organization works with a large number of certificates regularly (100+ per year) and automated solution like CertMS may be necessary.
  2. Production Web Servers: If your organization uses web servers for business or run an ecommerce website having an automated solution can save you from critical downtime and lost revenue.
  3. Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: If your organization has to meet certain compliance or regulatory requirements (like PCI-DSS, or HIPPA) and automated solution can help you with that.

When do choose a Manual Solution

  1. Small-Scale certificate management: If your organization issues or works with less than 100 certificates a year, a manual process may be sufficient and more cost-effective
  2. Simple Certificate Profiles: If you have simple certificate profiles with minimal automation required, a manual process might be sufficient.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the choice between a manual solution or an automated solution (like CertMS) is one you have to make based on your experience and organization. If you would like a free 30 day trial of CertMS to see how it can help your organization check out https://certms.com/try-out-certms/.

Why CertMS?

When it comes to managing certificates we can do it all from alerting and monitoring to scanning and reporting.

Documentation

Once a certificate is issued it cannot be changed. CertMS allows you to associate other information and documentation with all of your certificates.

Certificate to Server

Certificates can be hard to find if they are used on multiple servers.  CertMS can make the correlation between Certificate and Server for you.

Certificate Authority Monitoring

With our state of the art Certificate Authority monitoring we can alert you in real time when certificates are pending approval or when sensitive certificates are issued.

On Prem Appliance

While CertMS does not store and sensitive data we provide an On Prem appliance so you control all the data and communications.

Cloud Appliance

Don’t want any more On Prem servers that need to be updated? We also offer a Cloud Service that can perform the same functionality as the On Prem appliance but hosted completely by us.

Server Monitoring

CertMS is able to monitor Local and User Certificate store through WinRM and Kerberos or an easy to install agent.

Reporting

With a dedicated reporting engine CertMS can create custom reports on expiring and issued certificates.  Get reports in PDF, CSV, or HTML

Help Desk Integration

CertMS reporting was built to work with Help Desk ticketing systems so that you can quickly create help desk tickets on each expiring certificate. Complete with documentation.

Support and Upgrades

First year of support and software upgrades comes with your purchase of the CertMS appliance.  Additional years of support can be purchased.  CertMS Cloud Appliance includes Support and upgrades with your subscription!

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