The Business Case for Modern Certificate Lifecycle Management

As an organization’s digital presence grows larger it must actively manage its digital certificates because it is fundamental to its security architecture. As companies expand their online presence the difficulty of managing SSL/TLS certificates becomes substantially more complicated and depending on traditional PKI designs leads to high operational costs. This article looks at how Axon Shield’s technology provides a contemporary approach to Certificate Lifecycle Management, enabling users to effectively manage certificates with the help of experienced IT administrators rather than PKI specialists who are scarce.

Modern Serverless Architecture

Axon Shield implements a unique approach to manage Certificates throughout their Lifecycle by utilizing fully-managed PKI cloud services together with a completely serverless infrastructure-as-code setup that provides enterprise integration APIs. The traditional solutions demand additional software installations and continuous maintenance which distinguishes them from our approach.

• Core PKI (certificate issuance) uses platform-managed services which can be simply replaced by any technology that offers "digital signing."

• The deployment is fully managed through infrastructure-as-code.

• AWS managed services such as RDS and AWS Private Certificate Authority serve as the primary CA in the solution implementation.

• The solution operates from a dedicated VPC which provides a complete network isolation and meets strict security standards. The customer organization can own the separate cloud account where Axon deploys the entire solution.

• No further custom software installation or maintenance is required because end-user clients can access our solution which enables monitoring of client status via regular version checks.

• The integration with existing cloud infrastructure is seamless.

• The system operates on dependable and expandable AWS managed services.

• AWS Private CA integration enables the system to meet FIPS 140-2 Level 3 requirements for key security.

• Network and logical separation enables the solution to support HIPAA, PCI, and other regulatory standards.

The use of a serverless architecture provides maximum reliability along with scalable and cost-effective solutions which decrease operational overhead and ensure top security standards.

Challenge of Certificates - Validity Shortening

The challenge for organizations is that they operate multiple digital certificates across their infrastructure which they must monitor and securely distribute alongside timely renewals. When certificates are handled manually for these needs, the consequences are:

• Unforeseen certificate expirations leading to service interruptions

• Outdated certificates which pose security risks

• Substantially high operational costs in managing certificates manually

• Non-compliance risks arising from incorrect certificate handling procedures.

• Lack of visibility into certificate usage and status

Transforming Certificate Management

Axon Shield technology-enabled modern CLM solutions solve these problems through automation as well as centralized management. The key components of this approach include:

Automated Certificate Provisioning through ACME

ACME protocol enables certificate creation and renewal with enhanced efficiency through automated processes. Axon Shield's ACME interface enables:

• Reducing the likelihood of service disruptions because expired certificates require manual replacement but automated requests and renewals eliminate this need thus ensuring constant service availability.

• The practice of certificate generation via manual processes is eliminated by standardized, automated workflows which cover all aspects of certificate issuance from key generation to installation and validation.

• Certificate management errors decrease because automated procedures replace faulty manual processes maintaining adherence to security policies and best practices.

• Through automated provisioning services are deployed more rapidly thus enabling the necessary certificates for new services to scale with business demands without security delays.

• The uniform application of certificate policies throughout the organization, enforced by central management and automated policy application, ensures all certificates meet security and organizational standards.

• A certificate renewal process includes integrated automated revocation management.

• Certificate inventory management automates the administration of certificates to give real-time insights into all environmental certificates and their current status along with their upcoming renewal dates.

Centralized ACME Client Management

The ability to distribute and manage ACME clients across the infrastructure from a centrally managed repository gives several advantages:

• Version management - Simplifying problem analysis and corrections

• Centralized management of clients via a repository, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid setups, for streamlined certificate deployment across various environments.

• The ability to enforce uniform security policies across all endpoints is achieved by centrally managing distributed clients, thus ensuring consistent certificate standards and security practices.

• The distributed clients reduce the operational burden for IT teams by independently managing local certificate tasks with centralized visibility and control through the management platform.

• A single management interface provides enhanced certificate visibility and control along with real-time status updates and health metrics from all distributed ACME clients throughout the infrastructure.

• Automated monitoring of client health that continuously assesses the status and performance of distributed ACME clients, and notifies administrators of any issues that may affect certificate management.

• The deployment of distributed clients provides inherent redundancy and high availability, which removes single points of failure in the certificate management process.

Centralized Truststore Management

It is important to manage the ‘trusted’ certificate authorities no less than it is important to issue the certificates for the long-term management of internal or enterprise certificates. Using certificate authorities not approved by the organization can put the data in transit at risk and the lack of ability to add new certificate authorities can limit your organization’s ability to automate certificate issuance. Organisations can:

• Help application teams run straightforward operational procedures to manage applications

• Keep all systems in sync with regard to trust relationships

• Update trust anchors across the infrastructure quickly

• Help prevent risk from using outdated or compromised certificates

• Supports compliance with security policies to the highest degree

• Enable rapid response to security threats.

Enhanced Certificate Validation and Analytics

Through serving CRL and OCSP requests proxies provide valuable information about certificate use and aid in building dependency graphs to study connections to servers that have new certificates. These extensive monitoring features deliver both operational and security advantages.

• Through the analysis of CRL and OCSP request patterns, advanced security monitoring can detect certificate compromises early by looking for unusual validation request behaviours or sudden changes in access patterns.

• Real time monitoring of the certificate validation status gives you continuous visibility into the health and validity of certificates across your infrastructure.

• Increased visibility into certificate usage patterns provides an understanding of how and where certificates are used in your environment.

• Proactive threat detection is achieved by comparing validation request patterns to known indicators of compromise or suspicious activities.

Built-in Business Intelligence

Axon utilizes Amazon QuickSight, a business intelligence service that is fully integrated with the AWS platform. Axon Shield offers a range of built-in analytics dashboards that are readily available, allowing users to assess the accuracy of data in their asset management once connected.

• With real-time visibility into the certificate lifecycle, dynamic dashboards monitor certificate status, expiration dates, and renewal processes throughout your entire infrastructure, facilitating proactive management and risk reduction.

• Teams can create customizable reports and visualizations that provide tailored views of certificate data, enabling stakeholders to concentrate on the metrics that are most relevant to their roles.

• Teams can create customizable reports and visualizations that provide tailored views of certificate data, enabling stakeholders to concentrate on the metrics that are most relevant to their roles.

• Additionally, compliance monitoring and reporting tools automatically track compliance with security policies and industry regulations, streamlining audit processes and minimizing compliance risks.

Enterprise Integration Capabilities

Axon Shield's architecture is flexible and can support the integration with existing enterprise systems in a very efficient manner.

• The optional CMDB integration for asset tracking provides a real time and accurate link between the certificates and the infrastructure components that the certificates are protecting, which is very useful in documenting your IT environment.

• Sync with current IT service management platforms provides a consistent view across your technology stack and helps in making the best out of your ITSM tools and processes.

• Carefully designed workflow API integrations help to expand certificate management processes for general business and security needs of organizations.

• The automated ticket creation and tracking is in sync with your current service desk, so that all certificate related issues are well documented and handled according to your procedures.

• Greater asset relationship mapping provides a clearer picture of the relationships between certificates, services and infrastructure components which can be used more effectively to assess risks and determine impacts.

• It also has comprehensive audit trail capabilities that will help in recording all the activities that pertain to certificates, which will be useful in meeting compliance requirements and for security investigations.

Business Impact and ROI

Implementing a modern CLM (certificate lifecycle management) solution delivers tangible business benefits.

Cost Reduction

It is important for companies to manage their costs in the current competitive business environment. There are various ways through which Axon Shield can help save costs. First, its serverless architecture means that the user does not have to incur the costs of buying servers to support the software. Also, since the Axon Shield team has been able to use AWS tools to automate most of the tasks that would have otherwise been done by a human, there are fewer operational costs to incur. In total, the costs are much lower when compared to the costs of setting up and securing a business that is up and running.

• No software licensing or maintenance costs because of the serverless architecture, which eliminates the need for conventional software deployment and the associated maintenance expenses that accumulate over time.

• This has resulted in reduced operational costs because of automation and serverless architecture that is low on human intervention and high on infrastructure management, while the efficiency of our services has increased.

• The following are the types of AWS services payment model are; This model is based on the usage of AWS services. This means that you only pay for what you use. You can refer it as a pay as you go model. This makes sure that your expenditure varies with your usage, thus avoiding over provisioned and incured expenses.

• Reduce downtime from certificate related incidents by up to 95%. How? Through proactive monitoring with Automation in mind. We also avoid several nasty side effects that occur when certificate validity lapses. And that’s protecting the business!

• This is because, the use of automated processes and managed services in certificate management reduces the need for dedicated personnel and infrastructure.

• It also reduces the likelihood of costly security breaches through the use of a consistent and automated management system for certificates, which removes the element of human error and ensures that updates are done at the right time.

Enhanced Security

The fundamental focus of certificate lifecycle management remains security which means that Axon Shield’s method provides a comprehensive view to maintain strict protection as well as organizational agility. The platform generates exceptional security posture through automated monitoring and proactive management and deep visibility and this security posture is further reinforced by AWS Private CA's FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified key protection as well as strong network isolation.

• VPC dedicated deployment ensures complete network isolation which fulfils the strict security separation requirements of regulated industries including HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance.

• AWS Private Certificate Authority integrates with enterprise-grade key security to deliver FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliance for critical cryptographic operations.

• The logical segmentation of components and services maintains strict compliance standards and defines clear security boundaries.

• Centralized management and real time monitoring provides certificate visibility and control improving the ability to quickly address potential security issues.

• The analysis of CRL and OCSP request patterns enables advanced threat detection to detect certificate compromises before they can be exploited.

• Automated detection and alerting systems provide faster security threat response by detecting suspicious activities as well as unusual validation patterns and impending certificate expirations.

• A unified policy with automated renewal reduced certificate-related vulnerabilities.

• Extended tracking and reporting combined with auditing capabilities creates better compliance with security standards.

Operational Efficiency

To meet the needs of modern businesses operations must scale with demand. Axon Shield creates a smooth automated certificate management workflow enhancing organizational efficiency.

• Minimize human error in certificate deployment and renewal processes through eliminating manual intervention.

• Cut down certificate process manual interference with the help of intelligent automation and workflow management tools.

• Proactive monitoring and automation of maintenance procedures improve service reliability.

• Greater resource effectiveness is achieved when certificate management processes operate automatically and when certificate usage data is accessible.

• QuickSight dashboards providing data-driven decisions with actionable certificate lifecycle pattern insights.

• The system integrates seamlessly with current enterprise solutions to keep workflows continuous while preserving investments.

• The integration with CMDB provides enhanced visibility through complete understanding of certificate relationships and dependencies.
  

Competitive Advantage

In a modern business environment increasingly adopting digital transformation efficient certificate management stands out as a key strategic advantage. Axon Shield's contemporary approach allows organizations to speed up their operations while maintaining top security standards and adapting to changing business requirements rapidly.

• Use automated certificate management for new service deployments to reduce the time gap between planning and market launch.

• Enhance customer confidence by providing robust security and standardized certificate management practices.

• Unlimited operational scaling eliminates dependencies on manual processes so that as your business needs expand Axis Shield’s automated solutions keep pace.

• Better compliance positioning with complete monitoring and reporting capabilities.

Streamlined Engagement

Axon Shield's innovative engagement model leverages AWS Marketplace to simplify procurement and accelerate service deployment.

Simplified Procurement and Billing

By its very nature, Axon Shield is extremely easy to adopt for organizations already using AWS. You save months-long procurement cycles and can just buy the solution directly through your existing AWS Marketplace account—meaning no additional contract negotiations, no new onboarding processes for vendors, and no extra purchase orders to manage. The solution's costs simply appear on your regular AWS bill, eliminating the need to manage separate invoices or set up new payment processes. Your finance team will appreciate the automated cost allocation and tracking capabilities, as they can easily monitor usage patterns and assign costs to specific cost centers or projects. This streamlined approach saves time and offers the flexibility to scale your certificate management solution according to actual needs, with costs directly reflecting your usage.

Accelerated Third-Party Supplier Onboarding

As a solution, Axon Shield is designed to be very easy to adopt by organizations that are already using AWS. You avoid the long procurement cycles of 3 or 4 months and can simply purchase the solution directly from within your existing AWS Marketplace account, which means there are no additional contract negotiations, no need for new onboarding processes for vendors, and no extra purchase orders to handle. The solution’s costs are simply charged to you through your normal AWS billing, with no need to deal with separate invoices or set up new payment processes. Your finance team will like the automated cost allocation and tracking features, as they can easily track usage and assign costs to particular cost centres or projects. This is a more efficient approach that saves time and allows you to scale your certificate management solution based on actual needs, with costs directly tied to your usage.

Enterprise Benefits

• Leverage existing AWS relationships and agreements

• Streamlined procurement processes

• Reduced administrative overhead

• Faster deployment timelines

• Enhanced cost visibility and control

Conclusion

Modern Certificate Lifecycle Management is now a business necessity because digital security remains the number one priority in today's digital landscape. Axon Shield's technology provides a full-scale solution that turns certificate management from a risk factor to a strategic advantage.

With automated and centralized certificate management, organizations can reduce their costs, boost their security, and concentrate on their core business initiatives. Furthermore, it deploys technology fully automatically, so we can support you in developing operational procedures and establishing an engagement model for communication with applications teams and IT admins.

The return on investment comes from modern CLM solutions in the following ways: operational cost reduction, security posture enhancement, and business agility improvement. As an organization increases its digital footprint, digital certificate management becomes increasingly vital for sustaining competitive edge and business operations continuity.