Certificate provisioning

The need for certificate provisioning

Certificates are digital identities that enable secure communication and ensure the integrity of data in transit. When these certificates expire or fall prey to vulnerabilities, enterprise workflows break, posing threats to secure communication. Certificate provisioning is essential to prevent such outages. Organizations can efficiently create and deploy certificates as and when required, and manage the certificate life cycle safely by adopting a certificate provisioning process.

Different types of certificate provisioning

Certificate provisioning can be broadly classified into two types:

01. Manual certificate provisioning

Manual certificate provisioning is the traditional method of provisioning certificates. This technique is also the more time-consuming and error-prone. In this method, IT admins are required to manually create, deploy, and manage certificates. Although this can seem cost-effective, the costs from certificate mismanagement and lost productivity can be massive.

02. Automated certificate provisioning

Unlike manual certificate provisioning, automated certificate provisioning is a streamlined, effective method. Several certificate life cycle management solutions help automate certificate provisioning by automatically procuring, deploying, and renewing certificates.

Benefits of efficient certificate provisioning

For any certificate provisioning strategy to be efficient, it needs some levels of automation. By automating certificate provisioning with certificate life cycle management tools, organizations can gain the following benefits:

• Enhanced security: When certificates are renewed on or before expiry, chances of unauthorized access and data leakage are minimized.
• Better productivity: Manual certificate provisioning can be an exhaustive, risky task if an enterprise manages various certificates across different endpoints and applications. Automating certificate provisioning can save admins time and manual effort.
• Compliance benefits: Several compliance standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and others require enterprises to have a foolproof certificate provisioning and management strategy. Organizations can stay compliant with local and global standards and regulations by automating certificate provisioning.

Certificate provisioning best practices

The best certificate provisioning mechanism includes automation, with the help of any SSL/TLS certificate management tool. Before you proceed with identifying a solution for your organization, it's important to define an all-encompassing certificate provisioning process that would best suit your enterprise.

01. Audit your environment

Identify all the different endpoints and applications that currently use or would eventually require certificates. By doing so, you can identify solutions that would meet your SSL/TLS certificate management needs in the future.

02. Formulate a certificate provisioning strategy

Not all the certificates in your environment will require constant monitoring and renewal. Also, you may have several single-use certificates as well. Keeping all this in mind, when you come up with a certificate provisioning strategy. Specify clear roles and responsibilities for teams and administrators responsible, based on the each certificate's life cycle.

03. Find and deploy a certificate management solution

The perfect strategy requires the ideal solution to manage all your certificates. Find a solution that fits your requirements, is easy to deploy and adopt, and offers the best value.