New Year’s resolutions. Some of us love making them. Others cringe and skip it. And then there are gyms across the world that can’t imagine a world without resolutions, and the major revenue boost each January ushers in.
There’s no denying how hard it is to keep those dark 6:00 am dates with the treadmill. As a result, some of us may find that we once again put our personal health goals on the backburner, and sometimes even before January has come to a close (no judgement).
Organizations, though, can’t take their eye off the health and wellbeing of their business continuity. It’s a 24/7, 365-day requirement. Still, the start of a new year is often when organizations re-evaluate and recommit to priorities, strategies, and the overall health of the business that will carry them through the following twelve months.
A New Year Reset
One critically important area that should top a company’s resolution list each new year is a well-defined and executed digital certificate management process. Most websites and all major browsers now require SSL / TLS certificates to verify website ownership and establish user trust.
But managing your digital certificates can be difficult and labor intensive. It involves tracking the Certificate Authority (CA) of each certificate, along with where it was installed, the expiration date, the cryptosystem used, key length, and algorithm.
Expired certificates can trigger alarm warnings in browsers, which in turn erodes trust and can lead users to abandon your website, damaging your brand which impacts revenue. Meanwhile, internal expirations can disrupt critical business processes.
Organizations can - and absolutely should - make it a practice at the start of each new year to inventory, reevaluate, and when needed, reinstall SSL/TLS certificates. Doing so can help your company stay on top of:
- Operational efficiency, as you budget for and renew certificates before they expire and disrupt service
- Compliance requirements, helping you avoid penalties or fines for outdated or expired certificates
- Security threats, by routinely updating certificates that are optimized against constantly evolving cyber risks
Automation: The Key to Seamless and Secure Certificate Management
Each new year ushers in a fresh opportunity to improve on the previous year’s practices and results. And though you may—or may not—stick with being on that treadmill by 6:00 am for 60 minutes six days a week (hey, everyone deserves one day of rest), you can make this the year you simplify your company’s certificate deployment and management process.
It starts with automation that allows you to quickly find and securely control all the certificates you need to manage across your organization. GlobalSign’s Atlas Discovery and Certificate Management solution:
- Finds and monitors all internal and public-facing SSL certificates from a central location
- Tracks the source/issuing Certificate Authority for each of your certificates
- Locates dark certificates purchased outside your standard procurement process
- Monitors baseline requirements and best practices
- Maintains validity periods including issue dates, and more critically, the expiry date
- Saves your company time and resources by eliminating manual monitoring
- Uses an API or portal to request, view and revoke certificates quickly and easily
Make this the year you have a winning strategy in place that keeps your certificate inventory and management simple, straightforward, accurate, and automated.
