Activity

The Digital Certificate Management (DCM) software program has become one of the most vital elements of digital certificates for businesses. The aim of the system is to collect, record, standardize and archive certificate application and data, streamline the order process, improve quality, and ensure compliance, security, and availability throughout entire certificate life-cycle. Certificates, which are digital signatures that provide proof of authenticity and validity, are crucial for customer transactions and corporate identity. Furthermore, it enables organizations to provide access to authorized websites and to track and validate employees’ credentials. The program is designed to simplify workflow, reducing errors, increasing productivity, and increasing profitability.

There are four main objectives of digital certificate management. It aims at providing end-users with access to digitally signed certificates and maintains the availability and integrity of them in the network; it makes sure that digital certificates are maintained centrally by an organization’s DNS servers, to facilitate automated authentication and digital signature generation and validation; keeps track of certificates and their associated public keys so that authorization issues can be addressed; prevents unauthorized use of certificates; and prevents accidental, unauthorized changes in the scope and contents of digital certificates. The goals of the system are summarized as follows:

o Improving the user experience. As mentioned before, most users won’t take time to read the certificate, thus making them useless for various purposes. Through the automation feature, users will have less patience to read and process certificates. Also, the automated system provides for easier auditing, tracking, and approving. However, too many certificates will still pose a problem when handling sensitive and confidential data.

o Securing startup . Expiration dates may provide all the necessary clues on whether the digital certificate management application has succeeded in keeping the server functional, but fail in determining whether the server is functioning properly. There are too many certificates in the system is not capable of identifying each one of them and each one has a different expiry date. These certificates are used extensively for sensitive business data, such as financial statements, business plans, and strategic partnerships among companies. Aside from these, business critical information is often stored in forms of passwords or access codes. Expiration dates prevent tampering and unauthorized modification of the stored passwords and codes.

o Avoiding digital certificate outages. Businesses often experience significant losses due to digital certificate outages. Expiration dates keep them locked and unavailable to access, leading to increased costs and reduced revenue. A business may lose potential clients because of the inability to operate smoothly. In addition, business processes, files, records, and applications may be corrupted and damaged due to outages. Thus, to avoid digital certificate outages, management must identify the cause of them and take steps to eliminate them.

o Creating an ITSP-compliant security posture. Every enterprise must establish an ITSP-compliant security posture in order to secure sensitive business data and documents. An ITSP-compliant security posture involves adoption of best practices from other industries, including physical security, information security, and virtualization. startup , enterprises can mitigate threats and improve their overall security posture.

o Assigning responsibility for digital certificates. Each enterprise must assign the necessary responsibilities and features to the various roles and responsibilities of its certificate lifecycle management system. For instance, the digital certificate lifecycle management system must be assigned to IT security teams to implement security measures. Security experts must maintain these certificates on an ongoing basis and update them whenever changes occur. The certificates are also prone to abuse by hackers, so it is important that IT security teams perform frequent checks to detect and prevent unauthorized access to the certificates.

o Integrating public key infrastructure with the digital certificate management system. startup (PKI) is a collection of servers and services that facilitate secure electronic transactions between organizations and their customers. A certificate administrator oversees the configuration and uses of the PKI, as well as performs regular back ups of the certificates. It is important that an enterprise integrate the PKI with their digital certificates to provide maximum management benefits and reduce risks associated with unauthorized third party access to the digital certificates.