Level PKI Management
When cybercriminals are looking for targets to exploit, they consider whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Therefore, cyber attackers will look for operational or information technology systems and networks that will not be difficult, costly or risky to penetrate for gain.
Overlooked vulnerabilities in your business information technology systems and networks can lead to a cost-effective, efficient and less risky cyberattack for the benefit of cybercriminals. Improving your enterprise-level public key infrastructure (PKI) management will cause cyber attackers to look elsewhere when selecting their targets.
What is PKI Management?
A Certificate Authority (CA) issues, stores, and signs Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, which are data files linked to public and private key pairs. The SSL certificates authenticate identities while the key pair encrypts and decrypts data when connected to the network. The public key, which encrypts the data, is available for whoever needs access to the connection. In contrast, the private key, which is kept secret by the owner, decrypts the data.
Managing PKI requires the placement of roles, procedures and policies for the requesting, creation, management, storage, removal, revocation and destruction of SSL certificates to maintain connection authentication and public key encryption.
Improve Your Enterprise-level PKI Management Services to Fit Your Business Needs
If you are a small, mid-size or large business incorporating hybrid or remote work schedules for employees or your company is migrating data from server hardware to a cloud, you should constantly improve PKI management services for protection against opportunist cybercriminals.
Let’s look at the four ways businesses, from small to large, can improve on enterprise-level PKI management services.
1. Automate Lifecycle Management for Enterprise SSL Certificates
SSL certificates must have a lifecycle to ensure secure connections. The lifecycle consists of requesting, creating, issuing, verifying, revoking, expiring and destroying certificates. Your network connection will be unsecured if a certificate lifecycle does not perform continually.
It would be quite the task for an IT department to manually manage and verify that every SSL certificate is in place and all network connections are properly secured. However, if you automate the certificate lifecycle with an automated certificate manager, vulnerabilities in network connections will never happen.
If setting up and managing a certificate management system is too costly or inefficient for your IT department, companies such as Sectigo can provide automated certificate lifecycle management for a more cost-effective and time-saving operation.
2. Encrypt Emails Automatically
Email certificates can stop cyber attackers and phishing scams from infiltrating your network. Email certificates authenticate identity and encrypt and decrypt any emails and attachments.
3. Replace Passwords with User Identity Certificates
When hybrid or remote work schedules are becoming more common, with employees connecting to the business network with various devices, it’s essential to make sure they connect securely. Private PKI will authenticate employees using digital signatures without requiring passwords that could be compromised.
4. Protect Sensitive Data in a Cloud Provider’s Infrastructure
Certificates with encryption keys can also be generated and managed in a cloud provider’s infrastructure. These certificates would work much in the same way as if the certificates with encryption keys were created and managed on your networks, servers or devices, providing the same protection for your data.
Improving Digital Security for Your Business is Essential
Any business of any volume, size or operations will greatly benefit from improving digital security because devastating costs can incur due to a cyberattack that can damage your business operations or cause capital losses. That’s why investing in improving enterprise-level PKI management is far better than experiencing that catastrophic loss.
