Case Study

50+ Domains. 50+ Domains. 5 CAs. One National Retailer's Certificate Chaos Finally Tamed

How CertSecure Manager pulled a multi-CA environment back under one roof, put domain and wildcard policies in place, and automated certificate lifecycle management for a US retail chain operating stores nationwide.

Customer Profile

A large US retail chain with stores across the country, operating 50+ domains in the network (20+ of which carry CAs) across 5+ Certification Authorities. The certificate environment runs across both on-premises and cloud infrastructure and handles high request volumes.

Industry

Retail, National Chain Operations

Engagement Type

Certificate Lifecycle Management, CertSecure Manager Deployment

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At a Glance Outcome

50+

Domains unified under one management platform

CAs connected via Connectors into one portal

Manual approvals for non-whitelisted domain requests

Pane of glass for issuance, renewal, revocation

The Enterprise

Challenges

At retail scale, the team was juggling 5+ CAs across 20+ domains, watching for renewals without an alerting system, and trying to enforce policies that didn't exist. The infrastructure had outgrown the controls around it.

Fragmented multi-CA environment

20+ domains and 5+ CAs across on-premises, cloud, and public providers, each with its own procedures, handbooks, and training. Issuance had stopped being consistent.

01 ISSUANCE

Outdated PKI and no expiry alerts blocking operations

Microsoft PKI’s web enrollment was manual with no REST API, blocking DevOps automation. With no alert system, admins tracked expiry by hand, missed critical certs, and outages followed.

02 DEVOPS & ALERTS

No domain validation or wildcard controls

Across 50+ domains, nothing rejected non-whitelisted requests or blocked wildcards. Domain typos went through, impersonation was possible, and certificates sprawled.

03 POLICY

Before CertSecure, every renewal cycle was a fire drill across five CAs and twenty domains. Now the policies enforce themselves and the team sleeps through the weekend.

Encryption Consulting — CertSecure Manager Team

Our Offered

Solutions

CertSecure Manager covered both the common and the customer-specific gaps. It brought the CAs under one portal, added the policy controls the environment had been missing, split access by department, and automated the certificate lifecycle across the chain.

Capability 01

Cloud Deployment & CA Unification

Cloud deployment (over SaaS, for control and latency) unifies 5+ CAs in one portal for issuance, renewal, and revocation. REST API, ACME, and EST cover DevOps and IoT.

Capability 02

Policy Enforcement & Access Controls

Policy auto-rejected non-whitelisted domains, blocked wildcards, and stopped CSR re-use. RBAC scoped least privilege. An approval workflow gated public CAs and restricted templates.

Capability 03

Departmental Compartmentalization & Certificate Tagging

Each department got its own PKIAdmin. Global PKIAdmins kept cross-department visibility. Pre-defined org details (city, state, country, department) were enforced at request, cutting tagging errors and making issuance auditable.

Capability 04

Automation, Alerting & Reporting

Renewal Agents auto-renew certs on IIS, Apache, Tomcat, F5, and custom apps hands-free. Expiry alerts fire via Teams, ServiceNow, and email. Reports and in-portal CSR review replace OpenSSL.

What used to be a fragmented multi-CA setup is now one policy-driven environment. The risk, the overhead, and the outages it caused for a nationwide retail chain are gone.

Encryption Consulting — CertSecure Manager Team

ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY: ENCRYPTION CONSULTING · CERTSECURE MANAGER

The Overall

Business Outcome

CertSecure Manager gave the retail chain one platform for its certificate environment. The fragmented processes are gone, the policy controls run automatically, and the outages stopped.

Entire certificate environment unified

All 5+ CAs and 50+ domains run from one portal, less training, shorter procedures, one view from issuance to revocation.

Policy & access enforced automatically

Whitelisting, wildcard blocking, public CA restrictions, and departmental boundaries are now policy-enforced, no co-mingling, impersonation blocked at the platform.

Outages eliminated through automation

Renewal Agents and expiry alerts catch every cert before lapse, ending manual monitoring and outages. DevOps wires certs into pipelines via REST API and ACME.

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