How to Reduce Operational Cost And Increase Business Efficiency With These Use Cases
With the growth of web certificates in recent years, certificate management has become an increasingly important issue. A digital certificate is a virtual key that verifies the authenticity of a website by authenticating a digital signature that is included in the URL and other information sent along with the key. This signature identifies the specific person requesting the certificate, and is frequently issued with the help of a digital certificate creation service or organization. There are several advantages to digital certificate management. Among them are ease of management, increased security, improved privacy, and faster application response times.
The main objective is to have complete visibility into all digital certificates, identifying what needs to be tracked, prioritizing it, and then focusing efforts on ensuring they all expire, not lapsing. However, often times, digital certificate management isn't viewed as a low-maintenance activity, as depending on their life cycle, you might only need to worry about expiring each year. With this in mind, there are steps you can take to ensure the optimal management of digital certificates while also mitigating potential downtime issues.
While ideally, certificate infrastructure should automate the entire process, automation alone is insufficient when working with complex, interlinked digital certificates. Therefore, manual auditing and review of certificates and keys is still an advisable step to take. This not only helps increase awareness of expiration dates and associated risks, but also provides the opportunity for users to query expiration dates and to request new ones. Digital certificate management solutions offered by certificate automation firms usually come with their own set of features to automate auditing. If startups 're not familiar with these programs, it is recommended that you ask your vendor how to get started.
Another major reason to consider automation for digital certificate management is that it minimizes human error, which has been linked to the majority of security mishaps. By using a single interface, automated certificates make it easy to cross-reference different information sources, which significantly reduces the risk of human error. For example, digital certificates obtained from multiple websites must contain the same key. If two websites have conflicting key information (a common scenario), the more comprehensive and higher quality solution would be to compare both sites and choose the one with the highest quality key.
Certification experts argue that a proper digital certificate management solution should also include audit logs. Audits allow IT professionals to track and log activity to ensure the organization's security posture is effective and up to date. Without regular audits, it's easy for mistakes to slip through the cracks. In addition to preventing simple mistakes from destroying a business, it also enables IT professionals to spot suspicious activities or behavior. As such, experts recommend automation not just for digital certificates, but for all types of sensitive information to prevent any security risks.
The lifecycle of certificates is another concern. Given that a majority of organizations provide lifecycle management services, it's understandable that they also provide automated certificate fulfillment. While most certificate providers offer an online setup process that requires no software installation, some still require manual approval. Using the latest certificate management platform, business owners can automate the approval process and get quick approvals for all lifecycle stages. This not only lowers the risk of approving certificates prematurely, but it also improves operational efficiencies.
Certificates are continuously exposed to a wide variety of threats. From malware and phishing attacks to employee theft, digital certificates are at high risk. With lifecycle management solutions offered by many Certificate service providers, it's easy to automate the approval process so that employees can approve certificates on their own, eliminating human error. Additionally, certificates can be centrally managed, which allows IT professionals to easily track and update certificates across multiple departments. This will allow businesses to respond quickly to security threats and boost organizational productivity.
The use cases for Certificate automation and digital certificate management solutions are many. From improving workflow processes to reducing cost and increasing company security, automation increases efficiency and lowers the risk associated with many business processes. With proper automation and governance solutions, companies can focus on their core activities and eliminate costly outages that cause interruptions in daily operations.