What is Certificate Lifecycle Management

Certificate Lifecycle Management refers to the activities required to ensure digital trust for your organization. Certificate lifecycle management best practices for digital certificates include consistent use of tools that provide certificate discovery, access controls to the certificate manager, reporting, and certificate lifecycle automation. Digital certificates, or x.509 certificates, are the backbone of digital security. They are the main way that websites are secured, and identities are authenticated to access networks and devices.

How do I Manage a TLS Certificate?

TLS/SSL Certificate Lifecycle Management refers to the process of managing digital TLS/SSL certificates within a cloud-based console like DigiCert® CertCentral. Within CertCentral, users can issue and provision TLS/SSL certificates for their websites and servers, as well as revoke, renew and reissue certificates. CertCentral also provides a discovery tool so organizations can locate and track their entire inventory of certificates issued for their domains and get a full picture of where certificates are issued, who issued them, how they’re being used and when they expire. The first step to managing a public TLS/SSL Certificate is by ordering one from a Certificate Authority like DigiCert. Once ordered you must go through the validation process handled by a trusted CA like DigiCert, before it can be issued to your organization. Then you need to properly install the certificate on your domain or web server. Next you must track the certificate expiration date to ensure that it does not expire before you reissue or renew it.

Certificate Management and Lifecycle Automation

Why certificate management matters

Certificate management is the operational practice that keeps TLS/SSL, device, and machine identities valid, secure, and available across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments. It includes discovery and inventory of certificates and keys, policy-driven issuance and renewal, ownership and notification controls, revocation, and automation so operations teams avoid unexpected expirations and outages. Modern certificate management also means integrating with DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, delegating workflows to lines of business, and providing a single source of truth for cryptographic assets so security and engineering teams can act fast. DigiCert’s approach bundles discovery, cryptographic inventory, delegated workflows, and lifecycle automation in CertCentral and DigiCert ONE to reduce manual work, prevent outages, and scale PKI without sacrificing governance.

What is certificate management?
Certificate management is the end-to-end process of issuing, renewing, revoking, monitoring, and automating certificates so services and devices remain trusted and available.

Why does my organization need lifecycle automation?
Automation prevents human error and expired certificates that cause outages; it enforces policy consistently across public and private PKI.

How does DigiCert help scale certificate operations?
DigiCert provides centralized inventory, ownership/notification controls, delegated workflows, and automation through the DigiCert ONE platform to manage certificates at enterprise scale.

How do I get started?
Start by discovering certificates across your estate, set policies, and enable automation and renewal workflows in Trust Lifecycle Manager.

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