Table of Contents
Introduction
One of the major hurdles in the certificate management industry is the lack of experienced people and the right certificate management software. The whole industry works in an environment with fear options. The options are limited to the point where the administrative executives left with the only management option to manage the price of the PKIs manually.
Whether it is a misconfiguration or just a simple mistake, it can cost a lot when you consider the network security. This can be calculated when a lapse in the judgment can cost companies thousands of dollars.
In order to fight this crisis, cybersecurity professionals are trying their best to come up with a solution that can reduce these problems. According to cybersecurity professions, automation technology might hold the key to solve these problems. With the certificate lifestyle automation, people will reduce the chances of any possible security breaches.
Manually managing the certificates might be costly due to the hours of work one put in to maintain the custom-built PKI. With the certificate management software; it is much simpler and cost-effective. This article will help you with detailed information about the best practices in the certificate management industry.
Managing Certificates with Certificate Revocation List (CRL)
A Certification revocation list is the list of certificates that have been revoked by the certificate authority before setting its expiration date. This feature helps you when your device is stolen that has all your certificates. If the device certificates have the CRL number in its serial number, the server rejects its authenticity.
The certificate authority maintains the list and goes through the certificate’s serial number to ensure the certificates are active. And the RADIUS servers download this list and send it to the CA.
Furthermore, the CRLs are divided into two more categories:
- Delta CRL: It contains all the small files that have been revoked since the last published list of the Radius.
- Base CRL: It contains all the large files that have been revoked.
Managing Certificates with Identity Lookup
During the authentication process, identity lookup goes through the information. It validates whether the user is active within the organization by checking its information against the servers’ information. This feature helps the companies have the last line of defense to stop ex-employees from causing the company’s problems.
If a company values its security, it will certainly value the identity lookup tool. When this tool was introduced in the market, the only companies that possessed LDAP could use it. However, with the secureW2, people were able to eliminate the need for outdated LDAP servers.
Certificate Expiration Configuration
Certificate expiration is an automatic process that comes with the predefined lifecycle of the certificates. When a certificate is generated, they are given a limited amount of time to remain valid. After that, you have to apply for the certification again, or you have to renew it.
The validation period depends on what type of certificate you are issuing. This validation period lasts somewhere between 1 year to 5 years. This method of limited lifespans of the certificates adds an extra layer to the certificate security.
Certificate Expiration Notifications
When you are in the market, and your aim is to maintain a secure network, it is important that you send out an expiration notification to all the certificate owners. The reason why sending out notification is important can be understood by the 2017 expiration data breach. It happened because the certificate expired, and no one was noticed.
This is why we, as a responsible enterprise, help people take advantage of automated certification email notifications. When you generate a certificate authority on secureW2, you can choose how often your end-user will receive expired certification notification.
The Bottom Line
If you are the owner of a network, it is your utmost priority to configure your certificate management systems. We hope that we were able to give you the information you were looking for. We have tried to keep this article precise and to the points. If you want to learn more about certificate life automation, let us know in the comment section.
