What is worse than seeing the “This website is not safe” message when trying to access your company’s website?
Having 32 million users cut off from service because one of your certificates expired.
That’s what happened to O2 back in December 2018. The event was significant enough that it still serves as a valid boogeyman story for any company that deals with its customers online.
Similar scenarios can happen to everyone, no matter how big an organization — Microsoft, Spotify, and even the US Department of Justice can testify to that.
All of these outages can be traced back to expired certificates that weren’t renewed automatically. Obviously, these kinds of mishaps are easy to avoid, and yet they keep happening all over the world and in any industry.
Risks of Not Automating Your Website’s Security Deployment
Security certificates are designed to have an expiration date, and once it passes, the certificate is invalid and needs to be replaced. Otherwise, the website shows as insecure in your users’ browsers, and it becomes prone to outages or security breaches. That is why proper SSL certificate management and PKI management are crucial components of effective cybersecurity.
Here are some of the risks your organization faces when relying on manual certificate management.
Loss of Revenue and Damages to Brand Reputation
Seeing the warning message from the beginning of this article is unsettling for users, posing questions of the website’s credibility. Most users will choose not to use the website as a precaution, which means a loss of revenue for as long as it takes to identify the out-of-date certificate and update it. Obviously, the brand is being tarnished along the way, and many users will be lost due to mistrust.
Avoiding the Risk of Rogue Certificates
If your organization is managing an e-commerce website or has several websites under its belt, it is very easy to lose track of all the certificates being implemented. Some of these can turn into weak spots and need to be identified promptly on a regular basis. An automatic system that catalogs all certificates deployed on a website reduces the risk and keeps everything in check.
Saving Time and Manual Work
Uploading and renewing TLS/SSL certificates is a tedious and time-consuming task that can take up to a couple of hours. Needless to say, this makes your IT personnel’s time use inefficient.
Automated protocols for certificate management free up your IT team to do critical tasks while ensuring that every certificate is managed in a timely manner. Revoking old certificated and replacing them with new, healthy ones is being performed with no downtime and with no manual handling.
Seamless Maintenance and Updates
Manual certificate management usually means longer downtime during maintenance procedures, which can affect your revenue and customer satisfaction. By managing certificates automatically, the server is ready to upload and install the security certificates as soon as the maintenance is over, providing a seamless experience for your customers and an uninterrupted workflow for your employees.
Security Breaches Due to Human Error
Any certificate malfunction is potentially troublesome, but if it opens the door for attackers, the risk becomes exponentially increased. Invalid certificates provide hackers with a potential entry point, risking data loss and a whole system shutdown. Automated security protocols close these gaps and ensure that all of your security systems preserve their integrity at every moment.
Automated Online Security for Everyone’s Peace of Mind
Not having an automated certificate management system is like investing large sums into sophisticated cameras and burglary alarms and not locking your house.
By automating the entire certificate management process, your organization reduces the risk of being exposed to security breaches, service downtime, and data loss. It also makes your team more agile in deploying security solutions and adapting your service to growing market demands.
This is all best achieved through one unified certificate management platform that handles everything from certificate identification to their health maintenance, renewal, and removal. By choosing a vendor that can provide all of the necessary cryptosecurity measures in one platform, you can rest assured that all of the critical components are taken care of all of the time.
