Digital Certificates With Shorter Lifespans Reduce Security Vulnerabilities

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Shortening the life cycle of Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates can significantly reduce the vulnerability of websites and hardware devices that require these certificates. TLS certificates are exchanged between Web server and Web client (or server to server) to establish a secure connection and safeguard sensitive data. The majority of today’s digital certificates have a time-to-live of 398 days — that’s a 365-day certificate with a 33-day grace period, equaling 398 actual days before the certificate expires. If the proposals from Google and Apple are approved, however, that life cycle could drop to 100 days (90 days plus a grace period) or even 47 days (30 days plus a grace period).

It is not unusual to find certificates as short as 10 days or less in DevOps environments, says Jason Soroko, a senior fellow and CTO at Sectigo. Shorter lives are set because the number of days a certificate is live increases the possibility that data will be lost if the certificate is compromised. An expired certificate can lead to denying a browser connection, effectively interrupting the breach and stopping data exfiltration.

Automated Updates Make Change Easier

Despite the marked change in how often digital certificates will renew, not much will change operationally for organizations that currently rely on security information and event management (SIEM); security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR); or some other method for automating the renewal of such certificates, a common setup. In fact, Soroko says, certificate life cycle management (CLM) logs feed into the organization’s SIEM and SOAR systems to ensure that the certificates are updated before they expire, which creates business continuity.

Many small to midsize businesses (SMBs) that employ a service provider to manage their networks and network security might already be getting automated certificate updates through CLM services. Organizations using managed service providers or managed security service providers should ask them whether such updates are in place. CLM manages contracts from initiation through renewal. Using CLM software to automate processes can help limit organizational liability and improve compliance with legal requirements.

The only groups that could be significantly affected operationally are those that still manually update certificates. Each time a certificate needs manual updating, errors could be introduced, Soroko says. Instead of the annual updates done today, a 30-day certificate (plus its proposed 17-day grace period) would require 12 updates annually, a multiplier of 12 in introducing errors and increasing risk.

“For smaller companies that don’t have unlimited resources to manage their infrastructure, it’s going to be quite a wake-up call,” says Arvid Vermote, GlobalSign’s worldwide CIO and CISO, a Brussels-based certificate and identification authority. “In the past, [certificate authorities] have been advocating automation. They have been providing the tools. But why change if it’s not needed?”

As the certificates’ time to live gradually shrinks, companies doing a manual process will soon realize that automation is not only a quicker way but also a more reliable way to renew certificates.

Updating certificates manually is not easy, Soroko notes.

“It’s a very technical task, and it’s not difficult to fat-finger it and make an error that takes a website down,” he says, adding that most larger enterprises could not afford to have downtime on their Web assets, so they started to deploy CLM rather than manual updates years ago.

Regardless of the size of the company, Soroko says, the organization should automate updates. The technology is “ideally suited for everyone, and not just handing you a cert, but handing you visibility, automation, and discovery of [digital] certificates you don’t even know you have,” he says.

CLM Casts Light on Shadow IT

The frequent rotation of certificates means the CLM system will be scanning your environment often for certificates to update — possibly even finding digital certificates the IT department did not have on record, Soroko adds. This happens sometimes when enterprise department heads with signing authority to purchase services acquire software-as-a-service applications and Web services to address operational needs but do not report these services to the IT team.

With rogue applications running on virtual machines, Web servers, load balancers, and other hardware, it can be difficult to identify all elements of shadow IT. However, having the CLM systems constantly monitoring certificates can help identify new hardware, virtual servers, and cloud instances requiring digital certificates that might have been overlooked in the past. A certificate on an unknown device or virtual machine might be identified as an unauthorized connection or breach in progress.

The change in certificate life cycles likely will affect SMBs the most, Vermote says. In fact, this could be a good time for the CISO to go to the board and request funding for automation if they do not already have it.

"[The] CISO only gets money from the board if there is an incident," Vermote notes. “CIOs only get money from the board when systems are unavailable. In this case, it’s both, because if the board doesn’t give them the funding to properly automate and inventories of certificates expire, websites [and] legitimate services provided to customers, internal or external, will become unavailable.”

Justin Lam, an analyst with 451 Research, says enterprises need to look at digital certificates from a proactive risk management perspective rather than a reactive compliance perspective. While certificates with a longer life always could be revoked in the case of a breach or incident, shorter life cycles mean there is more oversight — and hopefully better control — of certificates that IT might not have been made aware of.

“Many security professionals do not actually own the environments where these things are protected,” Lam says.

And while managing all of the tools for cloud security posture management, zero trust, cloud-native application protection, and other security tools falls under the auspices of the CISO, many CISOs do not know when cloud sessions that require digital certificates are spun up. They have the responsibility to defend their networks but not necessarily the visibility into those networks — or the funding to protect everything.

About the Author

Contributing Writer

Stephen Lawton is a veteran journalist and cybersecurity subject matter expert who has been covering cybersecurity and business continuity for more than 30 years. He was named a Global Top 25 Data Expert for 2023 and a Global Top 20 Cybersecurity Expert for 2022. Stephen spent more than a decade with SC Magazine/SC Media/CyberRisk Alliance, where he served as editorial director of the content lab. Earlier he was chief editor for several national and regional award-winning publications, including MicroTimes and Digital News & Review. Stephen is the founder and senior consultant of the media and technology firm AFAB Consulting LLC. You can reach him at [email protected].