Automated certificate discovery and monitoring withRed Sift Certificates

Certificate Monitoring tools observe SSL and TLS certificates in some but not all of their lifecycle stages. Certificate Monitoring tools figure out:

• When a certificate has been issued
• Where it has been deployed
• Whether it's been revoked
• Whether it's due to expire soon, etc

Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools were developed to automate certificate issuance, renewal, and deployment processes. These tools emerged as a solution to manage certificate estates efficiently, aiming to:

• Automate the lifecycle processes involved in certificates
• Minimize the risks associated with managing complex public key infrastructure (PKI)
• Provide detailed reporting on certificate usage across the organization

Red Sift Certificates is a Certificate Monitoring application without the overhead created by the early steps of the lifecycle. It focuses on providing immediate and continuous visibility of an organization's certificate estate, expired certificates, upcoming expirations, misconfigurations and misissuances. While Red Sift Certificates does not issue, renew or revoke certificates, it is used by organizations like Coop, Rakuten, William Fry, and Denic to stop certificate-related outages and security risk.

Red Sift Certificates is a great application for organizations who:

• Are struggling to track and manage the expiration of their public-facing internet certificates
• Need an out-of-the-box solution that can be deployed within minutes and can easily be integrated with their existing tech stack
• Want full visibility into all issued certificates and each of their installed locations across their entire organization

Whether you need Certificate Monitoring or Certificate Lifecycle Management depends on the problem you have.

If your organization is experiencing downtime, failed audits, uncomfortable board-level conversations about poor security ratings, and risks from external threat actors because of misissuance and misconfiguration then Certificate Monitoring is for you. This is becoming the norm as most organizations already have CLM processes in place to handle the steps up until issuance, but lack visibility of what happens after that due to poor-performing tools or a lack of investment. 

If you have not yet put in automation for the early steps in the lifecycle of the certificate, then a CLM tool may be something you should consider. But a Certificate Monitoring product like Red Sift Certificates should be considered as part of that motion. Not only will you find that the product gives better visibility of your certificate estate once your CLM tooling is deployed, but it will also give you visibility of your existing certificate estate while you implement a CLM tool. Our proprietary discovery methods mean that time to value takes minutes and not months.

TLS is considered the more secure and modern protocol compared to SSL. As a result, TLS certificates are more widely used and recommended for securing internet communications.

When certificates expire, they lose their ability to securely encrypt data during online transactions. This opens the door for hackers to potentially eavesdrop on sensitive information or tamper with data. They can also lead to website downtime which can cause huge financial losses. Read our blog that gives real-world examples of the losses big name brands have experienced due to expired certificates.