Business websites all share one thing in common: the need to offer a secure site for clients and employees.
To ensure that your company has a website that utilizes encryption to boost its security and safety, you need to have several security certificates, also known as an SSL certificate. Public key infrastructure, or PKI, controls the issuance of these digital certificates, which in turn help to keep sensitive data inaccessible to hackers.
Websites with a valid certificate will have an URL that starts with “https” instead of “http”, and the URL should also have a closed padlock icon, usually in the status bar.
Website certificates must be valid and up-to-date for your site to be as safe and secure as possible. There are two main ways to do this: manually or with the help of an automated certificate management system, also known as a certificate manager platform.
To learn more about each of these options, which can help you decide which solution is best for your company, please consider the following points:
The Challenges of Manual Certificate Management
While you might understandably think manually managing your website’s certificates would be simple enough, unfortunately, this is not the case.
Although it is technically possible, manually managing your certificates can be a complex process. For instance, many businesses have multiple certifications, which may not all be visible or easy to access. This can lead to certificates expiring or other issues that go undetected until too late.
In addition, manually creating and renewing certificates usually involves working with at least one IT department and getting approval from several teams. Certificates can take several days to be approved, and if there is a delay in this process, the certificate can expire.
As a business owner, you undoubtedly already have a full plate of responsibilities and tasks you must handle daily. While wanting to keep track of your certificate management in-house is admirable, it might not be feasible and could lead to severe issues.
The Benefits of an Automated Certificate Management System
Here’s some excellent news: You don’t have to take on certificate management and all its tedious and time-consuming tasks. You can invest in an automated certificate lifestyle management system that monitors and updates everything and handles PKI management and SSL certificate authority as needed.
When shopping for an automated certificate management program, look for one that allows you to automate the issuance and management of the certificates issued by the program and all other certificate authorities. These can include Microsoft ADCS, AWS Cloud Services, and Google Cloud Platform, among others.
Also, because many transport layer security, or TLS management platform options, are based in the cloud, they tend to be more budget-friendly while offering seamless automation of your certificates and the ability to discover potential threats to security very quickly.
For example, the certificate manager platform from Sectigo will manage the lifecycle of your company’s private and public digital certificates. As a bonus, you can view and manage the certificates from one cloud-based, user-friendly platform. This platform also offers customer support from the initial onboarding process to when you use the forum.
Certificate Manager Platform is a Solid Choice
Granted, companies can handle their SSL certificates in-house. But as you can see, this can easily lead to certificates expiring, or having other issues that cause a website to become compromised. To ensure that SSL certificates stay valid and that every one of them is up to date, investing in a certificate manager platform is a logical solution that offers peace of mind.