For IT teams, certificate management can seem like a never-ending cycle of tracking expiration dates, renewing certificates, and monitoring certificate authority chains. Without automation, it’s easy to miss renewals, leading to costly breakdowns and downtime. As your organization scales, manually managing hundreds or even thousands of certificates quickly becomes unsustainable. With certificate validity periods imminently shortened to 90 or 45 days, the need for certificate automation has never been greater.

Once you understand that you need to automate, the next question is how? The first step is to select a certificate lifecycle management platform with automation capabilities. Accutive Security partners with leading certificate lifecycle management (CLM) vendors such as Venafi and Keyfactor to implement advanced, automation-ready solutions.

Once your CLM solution is implemented, the next step is integration and automation. There are several different approaches to certificate automation. A common approach is to leverage the open source Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol.

ACME provides a standardized way for clients (such as web servers or other applications) to request and automatically renew certificates from a certificate authority (CA). Its simplicity, affordability, and wide adoption make it a popular choice for organizations looking to streamline certificate management.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the benefits of transitioning manual processes to ACME-led automation and provide a practical roadmap to ensure a smooth change.

ACME’s Role in Certificate Automation

Managing certificates manually presents many challenges. IT teams often juggle spreadsheets, calendar reminders, and manual processes to track expiration dates, renew certificates, and maintain certificate authority chains. This approach is not only time-consuming and error-prone, but also exposes organizations to significant risks:

• Missed renewals: Expired certificates can lead to service outages, downtime, and frustrated users, impacting productivity and revenue.

• Accidental deletions: Critical systems can shut down if a certificate is accidentally deleted, requiring urgent and often complex recovery efforts.

• Security vulnerabilities: Manual processes increase the likelihood of human error, potentially leaving systems vulnerable to security breaches and compliance violations.

ACME (Automatic Certificate Management Environment) offers a powerful solution to these challenges. It is an open source protocol that automates the process of obtaining and renewing certificates, enabling a more proactive and secure approach to certificate management.

Here’s how ACME is transforming certificate management:

• Automated renewals: ACME customers automatically request new certificates before existing ones expire, eliminating the risk of manual monitoring and avoiding costly downtime.

• Continuous monitoring: ACME customers continuously monitor certificate status, providing real-time visibility into potential issues and enabling proactive remediation.

• Instant Alerts: ACME systems can be configured to issue alerts when issues arise, such as an impending expiration or revocation, allowing IT teams to take immediate action.

By automating these critical tasks, ACME reduces the burden on IT teams, minimizes the risk of human error, and improves the overall security and reliability of your certificate infrastructure. This frees up valuable time and resources, allowing IT professionals to focus on strategic initiatives rather than battling certificate issues.

How ACME Works

ACME is a protocol, a set of rules for communication between an ACME customer and an ACME server:

• ACME customer: This is the software that runs on your web server or application. It manages communication with the ACME server, requests certificates and performs domain validation. Popular ACME clients include Certbot, acme.sh, and web server integrated clients like Apache and Nginx.

• ACME server: It is the software that issues the certificates. Many certificate authorities offer ACME servers, including Let’s Encrypt, Sectigo, and GlobalSign. Major CLM platforms such as Venafi and Keyfactor also have ACME server capabilities.

Here is a simplified overview of the ACME process:

1. Registration: The ACME client registers with the ACME server.
2. Domain validation: The ACME client proves that it controls the domain(s) for which it requests a certificate. This is usually done via DNS validation or HTTP challenges.
3. Generating Certificate Signing Request (CSR): The ACME client generates a CSR containing information about the requested certificate.
4. Issuance of the certificate: The ACME server validates the CSR and issues the certificate.
5. Installing the certificate: The ACME client installs the certificate on the web server or application.
6. Renewal: The ACME client automatically renews the certificate before it expires.

This is how ACME works with other platforms

Venafi: Venafi TLS Protect Cloud can act as an ACME server, integrating seamlessly with your existing Venafi infrastructure. This allows you to automate certificate issuance and renewal while leveraging Venafi’s advanced features such as certificate discovery, inventory, and policy enforcement.

Key factor: Keyfactor platforms like EJBCA and Command also offer ACME server functionality. This allows you to automate certificate provisioning within your Keyfactor environment, benefiting from features such as real-time monitoring, tagging and robust auditing capabilities.

Using Venafi Or Key factor As an ACME server, you benefit from the combined power of ACME automation and a comprehensive CLM platform. This provides centralized control, improved visibility, and streamlined workflows to manage the entire lifecycle of your certificates.

Key questions to consider before moving to ACME

Moving to ACME requires thoughtful planning. Every organization’s environment is unique, so it’s essential to answer these key questions before getting started:

• How will ACME integrate with our existing certificates? Consider how your current certificates will carry over into an ACME-based setup. Some may need reconfiguration and understanding compatibility up front will avoid disruption.

• Can ACME meet our compliance requirements? For industries with strict compliance standards, it is essential that ACME automation aligns with existing security, logging, and auditing policies.

• What resources will we need to implement ACME? The transition to ACME may involve adjustments to existing infrastructure, setup of test environments, and careful onboarding of the IT team. Knowing the resources needed in advance will ensure a smoother transition.

Plan your transition to ACME with a CLM platform

Integrating ACME into your CLM platform can significantly streamline your certificate automation process. Here is a step-by-step workflow to guide your implementation:

1. Inventory and evaluation

• Start by taking a complete inventory of your existing certificates, including their types, expiration dates, and dependencies.

• Evaluate your current certificate management processes and identify areas where ACME automation can provide the most value.

2. Configure ACME integration in your CLM

• Work with your CLM vendor (e.g. Venafi, Keyfactor) to configure ACME integration. This may involve enabling ACME server functionality within the platform and configuring all necessary settings.

• If your CLM does not have a built-in ACME client, select a client that integrates well with your platform.

3. Pilot in a staging environment

• Before deploying ACME in production, thoroughly test your configuration in a staging environment. This allows you to validate certificate issuance, renewal and revocation processes without risking disruption to live systems.

• Pay close attention to potential challenges such as DNS configuration for domain validation and firewall rules that could interfere with ACME communication.

4. Implement monitoring and logging

• Configure your CLM platform and ACME client to log all certificate events. This provides an audit trail for compliance and makes troubleshooting easier.
• Configure alerts for critical events such as renewal failures or validation errors to ensure proactive responses and avoid potential outages.

By following this workflow and take advantage Using the capabilities of your CLM platform, you can effectively implement ACME automation and streamline your certificate management processes.

Automating your certificate management with ACME

The transition to ACME-managed certificates isn’t just about automating renewals; it’s about achieving resilient and reliable certificate management. From automatic reissue upon revocation to trust chain monitoring, ACME provides solutions to common, real-world issues facing technical teams.

But automation alone is not enough. Integrating protocols like ACME into existing workflows or platforms often presents challenges. Without proper planning and implementation, gaps can arise: untracked certificates, missed renewals or interruptions to operations.

Accutive Security provides the technical expertise needed to overcome these challenges. From implementation and integration to bespoke automation processes and management of ongoing operations as an MSP, Accutive Security ensures that your certificate management, whether using ACME or other protocols, works seamlessly in complex environments.

Moving from manual processes to ACME requires upfront planning, testing, and the right tools. But once in place, an ACME-managed configuration reduces manual work, minimizes the risk of missed renewals, and gives you peace of mind because certificates are continuously monitored and maintained.

The position How to go from manual to certificate automation with ACME first appeared on Acute Security.

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