Encryption & Key Management
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Governance & Risk Management
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GRC
Visibility Gaps Increase the Risk of Certificate-Driven Outages
The era of short-lived Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets Layer certificates is redefining enterprise resilience. By 2029, certificate lifespans are expected to drop to 47 days – a shift that transforms certificate renewal from a periodic task into a continuous operational function. For many CIOs, this raises critical questions around outage exposure, automation readiness and oversight accountability.
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In this interview with Information Security Media Group, Kevin Weiss, CEO of Sectigo, outlines why crypto governance is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of digital trust and operational continuity.
At Sectigo, Weiss leads strategy and operations, and works closely with enterprises managing large-scale certificate automation, visibility and cryptographic governance. He has nearly three decades of executive leadership experience across cybersecurity, enterprise software and digital identity markets.
Edited excerpts follow:
As certificate lifespans move to 47 days and renewal shifts from annual events to continuous operations, what is the most underestimated operational risk CIOs face as certificate rotation becomes this frequent?
The most underestimated risk is the belief that certificate management is simply an IT coordination issue rather than a full operational and business continuity challenge. Transitioning down to 47-day certificate lifespans by 2029 fundamentally changes how IT teams should be looking at their operating model: Renewals now become a continuous process, not an occasional task.
Our research found that only 33% of enterprises currently use automation for certificate deployment, and the reality is that manual certificate processes simply won’t scale in a 47-day life cycle. CIOs need to recognize that lack of automation becomes a governance and resilience problem. Without automation and centralized visibility into certificate management, the risk of outage caused by expired certificates skyrockets, impacting customer trust, revenue streams and even regulatory compliance.
How big is the gap between perceived certificate visibility and on-the-ground reality in large enterprises?
The visibility gap is usually much wider than enterprises expect. IT departments may think they have full visibility into certificates across their environments, but most enterprises face significant risk from rogue certificates. Even most junior developers can obtain and install certificates, and they do so, often without documentation or following established procedures. When these rogue certificates expire, systems go down. Those responsible for the maintenance of the systems don’t initially understand why the outage has even occurred. Once automated discovery is introduced, organizations often find their real footprint is several times larger. With 47-day certificate lifespans, every unknown certificate becomes a silent outage risk, making full visibility a baseline requirement.
During this transition, organizations will run a mix of long-lived and short-lived certificates across public-facing, internal and machine-to-machine use cases. What is the top two or three “red zones” enterprises would insist on stress-testing first?
Enterprises should prioritize testing environments based on the consequences of outages. Revenue-generating and customer-facing systems will tend to be high priority, along with critical business systems essential for operations to continue to run. Systems providing security, privacy protection or business continuity are also high priority, as the consequences of failure can be very high. Pure employee-facing and internal systems, while they still matter to business operations, are less impactful in the event of a short-term outage, so they can generally take a lower priority.
With 47-day certificate lifespans driving continuous issuance volumes, heavier API traffic and expectations of real-time validation at scale, what must enterprises demand from a certificate authority partner to avoid operational risk in this automation-first landscape?
As certificate renewals become monthly, the certificate authority plays a more critical role in business continuity and uptime. They must excel in four areas:
- Automation options: Automation extends beyond an Automated Certificate Management Environment. A certificate authority should support the full range of options, including ACME, Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol and Enrollment over Secure Transport, along with application programming interfaces, on-premises agents for common operating systems and direct integrations with existing IT tools.
- Ultra-tight integration with your Certificate Lifecycle Management, or CLM, platform of choice: Seamless integration with your CLM platform is not only essential for efficiency but also for accurate, reliable deployment and renewal.
- Proven track record: Your certificate authority needs to provide the full suite of certificate types you require reliably, quickly and without hassle.
- Crypto-agility and post-quantum readiness: Above all, choose a certificate authority that is crypto-agile and ready for future post-quantum transitions, not just playing catch-up.
The industry is moving toward post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, even as timelines and standards still evolve. If you were to outline a three-step playbook for CIOs to start aligning certificate automation, crypto-agility and PQC migration, what would it include?
Begin with a full audit of your certificate of estate: public, private, internal, machine identities, IoT and internal apps. Without complete visibility, automation will inevitably miss some certificates. Many organizations underestimate their certificate footprint.
Deploy CLM across the organization in order for issuance, renewal and revocation to happen programmatically. As Sectigo notes, manual processes fail in a 47-day life cycle, making automation no longer optional.
Design systems expecting algorithm change. Use certificate automation tools that support agile cryptographic standards and update paths. As the industry heads toward post-quantum cryptography, having crypto-agile systems now will make that transition manageable.
Quantum-safe cryptography is positioned as a long-term investment, but transitions are expensive and multi-year. How should enterprises think about quantum readiness from a cost-planning perspective?
Quantum-safe cryptography should be treated not as a sudden expense but as part of long-term infrastructure modernization.
Enterprises should integrate PQC into existing renewal or infrastructure refresh cycles. Rather than expensive “rip-and-replace” projects, embed cryptographic upgrades as part of routine life cycle management. Automated CLM systems that already manage certificates make algorithm updates part of normal operations.
Enterprises should also use crypto-agile platforms that support flexible algorithm transitions, reducing long-term rework and deployment costs. Changing cryptographic standards becomes a configuration update, not a full-scale re-architecture.
Consider cost savings from reduced outage risk and labor overhead. Certificate outages can cost companies between $500,000 and over $5 million per incident, depending on scale and sector. For many organizations, the cost – operational, reputational and financial – of doing nothing outweighs the incremental cost of building quantum-ready infrastructure early.
Ultimately, quantum readiness becomes an investment in resilience, smoothing the path ahead rather than reacting under pressure.