Automate certificate lifecycle management
Transport layer security (TLS) and secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates are key for building trust and establishing secure communications online. But manually managing their lifecycles is a major burden. Organizations need to automate processes while addressing business and regulatory needs.
What is certificate lifecycle management?
Websites use SSL/TLS certificates to verify their ownership and encrypt web traffic. These certificates are issued by certificate authorities (CAs) and are valid for a fixed length of time before they must be renewed.
Website owners are responsible for managing certificates throughout their lifecycle — from issuance to expiration or renewal. But these manual processes often require a large amount of their time.
Challenges of managing the certificate lifecycle
Time-consuming management
Managing SSL/TLS certificates can be tedious, time-consuming work. Organizations need ways to streamline certificate issuance, renewal, and other tasks.
Need for customization
Organizations often need to customize certificates, specifying hostnames, choosing cipher suites, adjusting validity periods, or picking specific CAs.
Ensuring compliance
For many organizations, maintaining compliance with increasingly strict data privacy regulations and the latest encryption standards is difficult.
Benefits of allowing Cloudflare to manage the lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates
Streamline certificate management
Effective certificate lifecycle management can automate domain control validation as well as issuance and renewal of TLS certificates, eliminating manual tasks.
Customize certificate deployment
The right certificate management solution will enable you to specify hostnames on the certificate, modify the validity period, and choose from multiple CAs.
Maintain compliance
Flexible tools will enable you to restrict the use of legacy cipher suites and allow connections only from traffic that supports the newest, most secure version of the TLS protocol.
Keep up with certificate renewals
Automating renewals can help ensure websites continue to appear in search rankings and are easily accessible by users, without requiring them to click past browser security warnings.
Key use cases
Key use cases for certificate lifecycle management
Automatically issue certificates
Rapidly growing organizations need a way to streamline issuance of new certificates for new hostnames and web properties. A solution that issues certificates automatically can speed processes and eliminate security and privacy gaps for new domains.
Bring your own custom certificates
You might need to extend the validation period of a certificate, choose a specific CA, or customize a certificate in other ways. The right certificate management solution will allow you to use customized certificates to fit organizational, industry, or regulatory requirements.
Retain custody of your private key
Organizations in highly regulated industries cannot share their private keys. A solution that offers keyless SSL enables these organizations to continue using TLS and leverage the cloud while keeping private keys secure on their own hardware security modules (HSMs).
Ensure security redundancy
Keeping backup TLS certificates is critical for avoiding gaps in protection in the event of a key compromise or CA revocation. With a lifecycle management solution that automatically backs up certificates, you can instantly switch to a valid certificate if necessary.
How Cloudflare delivers certificate lifecycle management
Secure your web app and reduce your team’s workload with Cloudflare Advanced Certificate Manager
Automated management
Eliminate tedious, manual tasks by letting Cloudflare automatically manage TLS certificate issuance and renewal.
Automatic encryption
Tighten security by automatically encrypting all new domains. Tailor encryption according to your needs and regulatory requirements.
Customizable certificates
List specific hostnames, establish a validity period shorter than 90 days, define acceptable cipher suites, and choose your preferred CA.
Free certificate management
Use the free Cloudflare Universal SSL certificate solution to reduce SSL/TLS certificate lifecycle management overhead with a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. Available for sites with only one subdomain level.
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Additional resources
Boost security team productivity with Cloudflare's automated TLS certificate issuance, management, and renewal.
Learn how Cloudflare's DCV Delegation lets you offload domain control validation and auto-renew certificates easily.
Cloudflare for SaaS reduces the burden of certificate issuance and management by proxying traffic through the Cloudflare edge network.
To use HTTPS, a website needs an SSL or TLS certificate. Read how to get a certificate and start encrypting web traffic.
Discover Advanced Certificate Manager — the flexible and customizable solution for managing certificates on Cloudflare
Dive into certificate pinning, its impact on public key infrastructure, and explore alternatives for easier management.
Transport layer security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that protects Internet communications. Explore how TLS works
Keyless SSL makes it possible for organizations that cannot share their private keys to move to the cloud while maintaining SSL/TLS encryption.