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SSL certificates are the hidden enablers of the internet. They encrypt and authenticate online commerce and communications. However, they present IT managers with several challenges, including:
Unexpected certificate expiry
The more certificates you have to manage, the greater the risk of overlooking a critical renewal date. The business consequences of a certificate expiring can be serious: at best, your website visitors get a security warning when they use your site. Worse, lost revenue can add up quickly if the expired certificate prevents transactions from being processed. Even if you catch the renewal, a last-minute “rush job” to renew a certificate that is near the end of its life is an unnecessarily stressful distraction from more important but less urgent tasks. Companies need a way to manage all their certificates in one place with a tool that allows them to make sure that they get enough warning of upcoming expiries.
Time-consuming paperwork
Even if you manage certificates centrally, dealing with internal processes to renew each certificate as its expiration approaches can be time-consuming. This can become a very cumbersome issue if you need to generate a purchase order for each certificate. Also, for Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates, going through the validation process for each certificate can trigger a lot of extra work. IT managers need a system that streamlines the purchase, auto-issuance, renewal, authentication and management of SSL certificates.
Unnecessary expense
Because most vendors require you to pre-pay for certificates, there is a risk that you could pay now for certificates that you may not need later. Also, purchasing certificates one-at a-time reduces the opportunity for volume discounts with many SSL vendors. This problem is multiplied when you need certificates on a short-term basis, for example to set up a test environment, or if your needs vary unpredictably. Traditional certificate management systems are not optimized for this situation, and the certificate-pooling model does not provide flexibility to quickly issue new certificates without making an additional purchase, as the pooled certificate can only be used on a single server at a time.
The business and security benefits of Genius Support Services
IT departments face a range of issues—some obvious, some more subtle—when dealing with SSL certificates. These issues can have serious business and security consequences. DIMS was designed with customer input to address these problems.
Certificate Lifecycle Management
Genius helps at every stage of the certificate issue and management lifecycle.