Certificate Lifecycle Management

Effective certificate management encompasses the entire lifecycle from initial request through final retirement. Each lifecycle phase requires specific procedures and controls. Initial certificate requests need approval workflows ensuring business justification and proper validation. Installation requires coordination across teams and platforms. Operations phase demands monitoring and maintenance. Retirement must ensure complete removal preventing confusion or security gaps.

Establish certificate naming conventions that encode useful information while remaining manageable. Include environment (prod, staging, dev), primary domain, year, and version in certificate names. Consistent naming simplifies inventory management and prevents confusion during deployments. Document naming standards and enforce them through approval processes. Consider automated naming for dynamically generated certificates to ensure consistency.

Change management processes prevent certificate updates from causing outages. Test certificate changes in non-production environments before production deployment. Schedule changes during maintenance windows when possible. Document rollback procedures for failed changes. Coordinate certificate updates with application teams to ensure compatibility. Major certificate changes like algorithm migrations require extensive planning and phased rollouts.

Certificate retirement deserves as much attention as deployment. Expired or replaced certificates should be archived rather than deleted, supporting forensic investigations if needed. Revoke compromised certificates immediately through your CA's revocation process. Update documentation reflecting certificate retirement. Verify old certificates are removed from all servers to prevent confusion. Clean up associated resources like DNS records for domain validation.