Digital security and compliance are ever-changing. Successful organisations understand that certificate management isn’t a set-and-forget task. It’s a continuous, intelligent process that adapts to the threat horizon, regulatory shifts, and operational realities.
With certificate lifetimes shrinking across every use case, from TLS to code signing, document signing, and S/MIME, IT teams, DevOps pipelines, and trust service providers (TSPs) face a new reality: managing a high volume of certificates, renewing them frequently, and maintaining compliance is no longer optional; it’s survival.
Drawing on insights from Ascertia’s team of experts, recent industry developments and the proven “Triple-A” approach – Ascertia, ACME, and Ansible, this blog explores how to:
Over the past decade, certificate validity periods have steadily reduced across all categories. This is not random change. It’s deliberate, aimed at improving trust, agility, and security hygiene.
TLS certificates
Code signing certificates
Qualified certificates
S/MIME certificates
The trend is unmistakable: certificate rollover must be faster, smarter, and fully automated. What was once an annual housekeeping task is fast becoming a daily operational requirement.
Shorter certificate lifetimes limit the window of exploitation if a private key is compromised, dramatically reducing the potential impact of a breach. They also:
The operational implication is clear. Without automation, managing this increased renewal cadence will strain teams, increase the risk of outages, and open compliance gaps.
Automation is the foundation of modern certificate lifecycle management. Open protocols ensure your systems can handle issuance, renewal, and rekeying without human intervention:
With ACME-compatible endpoints, enterprises can standardise certificate processes, avoid vendor lock-in, and adapt quickly to changing requirements.
While ACME automates issuance and renewal, Ansible enables deployment and policy enforcement at enterprise scale. This agentless, open-source automation engine can:
Together ACME and Ansible form a powerful, vendor-neutral automation layer that can keep pace with 90-day or even 6-day certificate cycles.
Frequent renewals naturally lead to safe, periodic private key updates, preventing long-term key exposure and enabling best practice, cryptographically sound key lifecycle management.
Windows environments often rely on Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS). Ascertia bridges the gap by integrating ADSS Web RA Server and ADSS PKI Server with AD CS, preserving native user and admin workflows while extending capabilities.
When users join the network and authenticate, device- or user-level certificates are automatically issued based on group policies and central templates. No extra effort or confusion.
Admins can define issuance rules by role, device class, usage, or key strength. All requests flow through AD CS, with Ascertia’s ADSS Web RA Server enforcing compliance, audit, and lifecycle policies across the estate.
Ascertia’s Certificate Locator scans networks for hidden or third-party certificates, eliminating blind spots from shadow IT. Certificates can be filtered by user, algorithm, key size, owner, or compliance status.
Built-in linting checks ensure every certificate meets CA/B Forum, ETSI, Mozilla CT, and other standards before they become an incident.
When combined with ACME and Ansible, Certificate Locator becomes part of a closed-loop system: discover, standardise, renew, and deploy—automatically.
The accelerating shift to short-life certificates has made manual certificate management obsolete. By combining:
Organisations gain a streamlined, vendor-neutral, and resilience CLM strategy. This “Triple-A” approach standardises processes, eliminates manual intervention, reduces outage risk, and maintains compliance even as certificate volumes grow and lifetimes shrink.
In 2025, with cloud workloads, zero-trust frameworks, and quantum-era cryptography, agility and control are essential. A modern PKI strategy must:
| Capability | Benefit | Ascertia Product |
|---|---|---|
| Short-lived certificate issuance and renewal | Reduce PKI risk | ADSS Server and ADSS Web RA |
| Support for ACME, SCEP, CMP, EST, WS-STEP | Multi-protocol capability | ADSS Web RA Server v2.6 |
| Linked Windows Auto-enrolment | Admin-free deployment | ADSS Web RA Server & Active Directory Certificate Services |
| Certificate discovery and compliance reporting | Prevent issues before they snowball | Certificate Locator |
| PQC readiness and crypto-agility | Stay ahead of threats | ADSS Server |
Transform your certificate strategy into a secure, compliant, automated, and agile system, ready for today’s risks and tomorrow’s challenges.
Stop chasing certificates. Start managing digital trust with confidence.
Contact Ascertia to discuss your organisation’s unique requirements and see how the Triple-A CLM approach can give you a strategic advantage in 2025 and beyond.