Where this offering fits
Certificate management tackles visibility and lifecycle coordination across the certificate estate. Evaluate it when application owners cannot reliably identify expiry, renewal responsibility or where a certificate has been deployed. This scope is distinct from establishing a new PKI, because certificates may come from several existing issuing authorities.
Architecture and rollout decisions
Create a baseline of known certificates, locations and owners before comparing discovery results. Confirm which systems support automated renewal and which require a documented manual handoff. Include private keys and installation responsibilities in the operating design without exposing secret material in inventory exports. An acceptance exercise should renew a representative certificate, deploy it and verify the dependent service, including the escalation path if installation fails.
An evaluation scenario for this offering
Take one known external certificate and one internal certificate from different owners. Compare inventory, renewal notifications and supported installation paths. Validate the application after a replacement and introduce an unreachable endpoint to inspect escalation. The accepted operating record should distinguish issued, deployed and verified states. This helps prevent an expiry task being closed while the consuming service still presents an old certificate or a team assumes another administrator completed the change.
Evidence to request for this scope
- Check coverage of external-facing services and less visible internal endpoints.
- Match supported issuer and endpoint integrations to the proposed licence.
- Retain ownership and exception records so certificate changes remain actionable after staff or application changes.