Certificate Discovery

The process of installing certificates within an organization involves:

• Discover
• Monitor
• Automation
• Integration

Certificate Discovery provides us with a better vision of how certificates are being used in an organization. Certificate inventory aids in analyzing certifications for cryptographic security standards and expiration dates. However, there’s no prospect of averting the next certificate-related disruption without visibility.

Certificate Discovery Process

Certificate Discovery Process works in different phases:

1. Direct CA Integration

   The process of certificate discovery starts with CA Integration. It involves integrating with own certificate authorities and 3rd party certificate authorities. It will allow you to gather all of your inventory straight from the source in one location.
   You can request new certificates, revoke them, renew them, and renew them before they expire via direct synchronization with CAs.

2. SSL/TLS Discovery

   It is used for locating the positions where certificates are stored in your network. Most enterprises don’t have complete visibility about their Certificate Infrastructure. When we know the exact location of credentials, we can easily replace them as per our needs.

3. Certificate Store

   Some certificates aren’t stored in-network; they live in key and certificate stores. Some of the Keystore available are Java KeyStore (JKS), IIS Servers, Cloud Services like Azure Key Vault, etc.

Importance of Certificate Discovery

Most Enterprises don’t have proper visibility of their certificate structure, and visibility is the most crucial aspect of a Certificate management process. The problem with manual certificate management is the high probability of human error and improper inventory documentation.

With the world progressing towards digitalization, the need for digital certificates is spiked.
The use of Self Signed Certificates is solving this problem. With the help of Self Signed Certificates, we can quickly generate these certificates.

Sometimes, we need Temporary Certificates for testing purposes which should be replaced before production. However, due to some error in the process, sometimes, these temporary certificates enter the organization’s infrastructure without being noticed, which can cause application outages and can be easily trapped by intruders. These type of challenges occurs for Known Certificates also. So, Certificate Discovery helps us keep track of all these certificates and provides a better vision, preventing various application outages.