What is a Digital Certificate and Why Do They Matter for Your Business?

Digital certificates provide practical and reliable ways to secure online communications and business data. Digital security certificates are not technically complex per se. But they do come with built-in expiration dates. This means they could expire if they are not renewed on time.

Further, issues with the certificate could need to be remediated quickly for continued protection. In either case, businesses are left open to attacks and even operations being brought to a grinding halt. As a result, the effective management of digital certificates is indispensable. 

Read on to learn more about digital certs and the ways to manage them.

What is a Digital Certificate?

A digital certificate is an electronic credential that cryptographically links the certificate owner’s identity to a pair of encryption keys (public and private). They are also known as X.509 certificates since they use the X.509 encryption standard. The X.509 is an encryption standard defining the public-key certificate format. It tells you how the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) gets formatted and exchanged.

These certificates help establish mutual non-repudiation between the sender and receivers. Put simply, when a connection is established, the sender cannot deny having sent a message, and the receiver cannot deny receiving it, making it difficult to refute the source of the message or question its authenticity and integrity. So, digital certificates help businesses to authenticate, secure, and encrypt communications and data.

Who Issues Digital Certificates? 

While digital certificates can be self-issued, it is best to have a third-party issuer, a trusted and reliable Certificate Authority (CA), issue them for a fee. The fee paid to the CA must be considered an investment in the organization’s security and growth. 

Why growth? 

Because search engines value digital certificates and the level of security provided by the website, secure websites get higher search engine rankings, while those without the right certificates get penalized with low rankings, security warnings, or even being blocked.

This means your website or application will have lower click-throughs, visits, etc., and there is a high risk of losing potential leads. Plus, certificates issued by reputed CAs invoke user trust and confidence when visiting websites or accessing web applications. 

Information Contained in X.509 Certificates 

The following information helps users and browsers ensure the security certificate is valid and issued by a trusted CA to a legitimate entity. 

• Version indicating which data must be included in the certificate.  
• Serial number to differentiate it from other certificates. 
• Algorithm information is used by issuing authorities to sign certificates. 
• Issuer distinguished name, which is typically the CA. 
• The ‘not before’ and ‘not after’ fields indicate the certificates’ validity period. 
• The distinguished subject name indicates to whom the certificate was issued.  
• Subject public key information. (While public keys are meant to be shared, private keys must be kept confidential.)
• Usage information
• Extensions (optional)
• Signature of the issuer and so on. 

Certificate Revocation 

Digital certificates using the X.509 encryption standard also define certificate revocation lists (CRLs) which help disseminate information about certificates deemed invalid by the CA before their assigned or actual expiration date. Certificates may be revoked before their expiration owing to 

• private key compromises
• mis-issued certificate
• CA itself has been compromised
• change in information (as mentioned in the certificate) of the entity to whom the certificate was issued, etc. 

Certification Path Validation Algorithm 

This is another critical feature of X.509 certificates. It traces the certificate path and validates it under a given PKI. The certification path begins with the subject certificate and advances through intermediary certificates before reaching a trust anchor or a root certificate typically issued by a trusted CA. This path validation feature is especially important when the relying party is presented with a certificate that cannot be explicitly trusted. 

What are some typical digital certificate types?

1. TLS/SSL Certificate: Installed on the server, these certificates ensure security, privacy, and integrity of communication between the server and browser/ client. When protected by a TLS/ SSL security certificate, the address bar will show a padlock and https while visiting the website. 
2. Code Signing Certificate: Code signing certificates are signed by publishers/ developers of the software/ files and serve as an indicator that the files/software downloaded on the internet haven’t been tampered with. This is especially important when software is to be downloaded from third-party websites. 
3. Email Signing Certificate: S/MIME certificates or Personal Authentication Certificates (PACs) encrypts email data and attachments. It helps authenticate the sender to servers and other devices. In addition, it proves to recipients that the data/ content contained in the email has not been tampered with or modified.
4. Document Signing Certificates: These digital certificates enable you to sign documents (.docx, .pdf etc.) you create. It encrypts the document and tells the reader/ recipient that the document creator created the document and has not been altered/ modified, thereby validating its integrity. 
5. Client Certificate: Also known as digital IDs, these certificates are used to differentiate between different users, different machines, and users from machines. Emails, two-factor authentication in payment portals, etc., are some forms of client certificates. 

Why is it essential to monitor digital certificates?

Digital certificates expire and get lost in the system, or they may be revoked and not replaced, or there could be unused and stagnant certificates. 

Why is that a problem? 

There are 3 reasons – 

1. It could lead to outages and downtimes.
2. It could lead to cyber-attacks and breaches.
3. It could erode the search rankings of the website/application, with search engines displaying visible signs indicating insecure connections.

Avoid Cyber-attacks And Breaches

Digital certificates contain critical information such as domain and organization names. If the certificate expires or is lost in the system and the attackers access them, they use information from the certificates for impersonation and other attacks.

In addition, if the underlying configurations are weak, they may be able to mine keying information to get access to mission-critical assets or to eavesdrop on corporate communication.

If certificates are not renewed or replaced promptly, you leave your data and corporate communications open to a wide range of attacks.  When digital certificates are revoked before expiration, they need to be replaced quickly. If not, the website/ application/ software is protected by the revoked certificate and left open to attacks, identity thefts, data thefts, etc.

Even if the certificates haven’t expired, if they use outdated and inefficient cryptographic practices, the website/ application using such digital certs is not secure. An efficient certificate management system enables organizations to keep an eye out for such issues and remediate them before they spiral out of hand. 

Attacks that could result from expired/ revoked/ weak certificates: 

• Man-in-the-middle attacks such as Eavesdropping and Impersonation  
• Illegitimate access to mission-critical assets
• Data theft 
• Identify theft  
• Session hijacking
• Frauds
• Advanced persistent malware 
• Phishing attacks, etc. 

Prevent Downtimes and Outages 

Even one unidentified expired/ revoked/ invalid/ weak X.509 certificate could lead to downtimes and outages. Similarly, when the certificate is not issued by a trusted CA or is not properly configured/ installed, it could lead to service disruptions and downtimes. The outage could be a simple error on screen to multiple process interruptions, to abrupt termination of service resulting from protocol errors. 

Downtimes and outages cost the business massively, especially in the case of certificates used in the IoT environment. For example, Data suggests that even 1 hour of downtime (across 1 year) affecting a single server costs businesses over USD 100,000 annually. If the outage affects a single server, that amounts to USD 1667 per minute. 

When you keep an eye on digital certificates with a proper certificate management system, you can proactively ensure that certificates are renewed/ re-issued. It also helps you detect and rectify certificate issues before anything untoward happens. 

Why is Trust in Digital Certificates Vital for Website Success? 

Why would a user want to visit a sketchy or insecure website? Why would they consider a purchase from such a website? 

When you have certificates that have expired, rendered invalid, or with weak encryption, the search engine warns the user. The address bar could have a warning, or a full-page warning may appear, or the service could be terminated. Essentially, expired/ invalid/ weak certificates may affect your search engine rankings.

When you keep an eye on certificates across their lifecycle, you can prevent such issues and ensure that your website is always available to legitimate users. 

In any of the above three scenarios, there is a blatant breach of user trust and confidence. This can spiral into major losses for the business with higher bounce rates and customer attrition. 

When you keep an eye on all your digital certificates, you will know their status and be able to effectively take the required action to ensure the continued security of your websites, software, files, databases, and applications, among others. In a nutshell, we can say that digital security certificates become worthless, and their effectiveness diminishes without effective certificate management across their lifecycle.

Key Elements of Effective Certificate Management

Certificate management is the process of discovery, analysis, monitoring, and managing all digital certificates used by the organization across its digital environment. It is a fundamental component of an organization’s sound cybersecurity strategy.

Critical Aspects of Managing X.509 Certificates

• Knowledge: To get ahead of certificates, you must understand what endpoints and digital assets exist within your IT environment. Further, you need to know what certifications are used, how many certificates exist, where they are used, for what purpose, how effective they are at securing those endpoints/ assets, is the underlying configuration is secure, etc.  
• Planning: Irrespective of whether you use automation or manual measures to manage digital certificates, you need a proactive approach and plan ahead. To this end, you need complete visibility into the certificate lifecycle, real-time insights on certificates, the strength of the security configuration, etc. Further, the planning must tell you what happens to certificates that expire, what happens when something changes, and how changes to certificates impact your assets and endpoints, etc.  

• Control: The entire process of certificate management must give you complete control and help ensure that certificates do not get lost within the system. You must be able to monitor X.509 certificates fully and continuously across their lifecycle. The process and solution in place must enable you to seamlessly generate audits and stay ahead of expirations and renewals at scale while avoiding service disruptions.

How to Manage Digital Security Certificates? 

A. Steer Away from Inefficient Certificate Management Methods

Manual management of digital certificates with pen and paper is possible if you only have a handful of certificates to track and manage. However, in the current scenario, businesses are working with a growing network of IoT devices and components in the IT environment, leaving more secure endpoints. This translates into multiple certificates with varying expiration dates. This rules out manual monitoring and management of digital certificates. 

Then, spreadsheets must be enough, right? No. Not for today’s dynamic and complex IT environment. 

While spreadsheets are a time-honored template for managing certificates, they do not offer real-time visibility into the issues or the certificate’s lifecycle. The last thing a business would want is for a certificate to get lost in the system only to be unearthed by an attacker. 

These manual methods of certificate management are prone to errors and inefficiencies, which could damage the organization massively. Furthermore, these measures are reactive at best, not proactive or effective. 

B. Embrace Intelligent Automation 

With an intelligent and automated certificate lifecycle management system, businesses can proactively monitor and manage their X.509 certificates at scale without the need for regular human intervention.

There is no need for manually feeding in data or managing certificates, avoiding unnecessary errors or overheads. Such an intelligent certificate management solution sends alerts when certificates expire or if another action is necessary. So you can proactively rectify/ remediate issues. 

The best certificate management solutions automatically run crypto-agility scans and TLS server tests to continuously identify the strength of the encryption, best practice violations, compliance violations, server configurations/ misconfigurations, low scores, etc. You can take steps to remediate the issues based on these real-time insights and alerts. 

Intelligent certificate management systems offer a 360-degree view of digital certificates, making it easier to view the certificate inventory, monitor certificates, and track changes. Manual methods do not provide visibility unless you manage only a handful of certificates. Without visibility, it is impossible to manage certificates effectively. There is also a high risk of losing certificates in the system.  

Not only does automation enable effective and efficient management of voluminous certificates, but it scales as the number of certificates increases. So, you need not worry about data entry or updating the database.

Furthermore, if certificates are revoked or found to have weaker/ outdated encryption protocols, it is easier to filter and locate such certificates owing to the visibility provided by intelligent certificate management systems, thereby infusing agility into the process. Overall, automated management solutions are agile, flexible, and scalable. 

With automated certificate management systems, you can bid farewell to the time, money, and hassle costs associated with certificate management. 

How to Choose a Certificate Lifecycle Management Solution? 

It is best to avoid manual and traditional approaches to managing certificates. Instead, leverage a solution that puts you in control and enables you to ensure heightened security. The Certificate Management solution must have the following features: 

• Tools for end-to-end, cohesive certificate lifecycle management of large volumes of certificates 
• Multi-layered, robust encryption and security features 
• Use of intelligent automation and other advanced technologies 
• Complete visibility into the digital certificate lifecycle 
• Real-time insights and alerts on underlying security configurations, low scores, compliance/ policy/ best practices violations, etc. 
• Flexibility, agility, and scalability
• Single, unified dashboard to manage X.509 certificates in a centralized manner
• Guaranteed compliance with industry standards and regulatory frameworks 
• Simple and easy-to-use interface  

The Way Forward

Keeping an eye on digital certificates enables organizations to move from reactive to proactive security and management of certificates. It helps keep customer trust and confidence intact while preventing attacks, breaches, and outages. Organizations can save hundreds of thousands of precious dollars through efficient certificate management.

To manage digital security certificates effectively at scale and in an agile manner, leverage an advanced certificate lifecycle management solution like Entrust Certificate Management System (CMS) from Indusface.

Garima Khandelwal

A Digital marketing expert with a passion for all things digital. With a wealth of experience in the field, can excel at crafting and executing data-driven marketing strategies that drive results. Also, loves to travel and explore new things.