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CLM encompasses several key stages:

Key Stages of Certificate Lifecycle Management:

  1. Discovery: Locating all certificates across an organization's network to ensure none are expired, misconfigured, or unknown. This step often involves centralizing certificates into an inventory for easier management125.
  2. Issuance/Generation: Creating or purchasing digital certificates from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). This includes generating key pairs and Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) to verify the identity of the certificate holder13.
  3. Provisioning and Deployment: Installing and configuring certificates on relevant devices, servers, or applications to enable secure communication56.
  4. Monitoring: Continuously tracking certificate status to detect potential issues, such as impending expirations or security vulnerabilities35.
  5. Renewal: Replacing certificates before they expire to maintain uninterrupted security. This may involve generating new keys or reusing existing ones35.
  6. Revocation: Invalidating a certificate if it is no longer needed, compromised, or associated with a departed entity. Revoked certificates are added to a Certificate Revocation List (CRL)35.
  7. Auditing and Reporting: Keeping records of certificate usage, expiration, and revocation to ensure compliance with regulatory standards and identify potential risks45.
  8. Destruction: Securely deleting expired or unused certificates and their private keys to prevent misuse5.

Importance of CLM:

  • Prevents service disruptions caused by expired certificates.
  • Mitigates security risks like man-in-the-middle attacks.
  • Ensures compliance with industry regulations (e.g., GDPR).
  • Reduces operational complexity through automation and centralized management tools235.

By implementing best practices for CLM, organizations can safeguard sensitive data, maintain trust in digital services, and streamline certificate-related processes.

 
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Sectigo
Website Security, Website Certificate Management, Certificate Lifecycle Management - CLM, Domain Certificates

Sectigo is the industry's leading provider of comprehensive Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM). 

With Sectigo's automated cloud-native platform, we can secure humans, devices, and workloads regardless of their origins. By helping our customers reduce their IT investments, protect their data, safeguard their reputations, and preserve their customer relationships, we help reduce the cost and complexity of their IT investments.

Sectigo protects its customers against today's outages and prepares them for quantum computing advances of tomorrow. Sectigo's goal is to keep the lights on.