Visibility and control of digital certificates remains a challenge for even the largest enterprises, as evidenced by a high profile incident this week affecting Microsoft’s LinkedIn. Users accessing LinkedIn on Tuesday got a warning from their browsers alerting them about an insecure connection. The culprit: An expired TLS certificate.

In a statement to the press, LinkedIn said it experienced a “brief delay” in updating a digital certificate, and stated that member data wasn’t affected. Yet, the incident spotlights a nagging issue that frequently trips even the most technically savvy companies in the world: Digital certificate management.

Qualys SSL Labs’ SSL Pulse, which monitors the quality of SSL/TLS support across 150,000 of the most popular websites in the world, rated about 33% of the sites monitored as having inadequate security in its May report. A few thousand of these sites had expired certificates.

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How many digital certificates are in use in your organization? When do they expire? Do you have a way of discovering digital certificates from unapproved Certificate Authorities?

Most organizations can’t answer these questions with complete certainty, because they lack the necessary visibility and control over their certificates. This creates the potential for security lapses, since SSL/TLS certificates are critical for the integrity and protection of a host of e-business functions.

With proper certificate management, organizations can cut their risk of breaches and unplanned outages, and continuously and effectively protect their digital assets, Asif Karel, a Qualys Director of Product Management, said recently during a webcast.

Since their creation in the mid-1990s, digital certificates have provided security for Internet traffic. They’re meant to ensure the confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation of online communications in public-facing online services, internal services, machine-to-machine communications, public cloud services and API integrations.

During his webcast, Karel outlined the current challenges organizations face with certificate visibility, and explained how Qualys can help with CertView, a free app available now.

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Digital certificate management is in an inadequate state at most organizations, a serious problem, considering that SSL/TLS certificates are critical for a host of e-business functions.

“If you’re doing something on the Internet, you’re using SSL,” Asif Karel, a Qualys Director of Product Management, said at the RSA Conference 2018.

Specifically, digital certificates are used to ensure the confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation of public-facing online services, internal services, machine-to-machine communications, public cloud services and API integrations.

During his presentation, Karel outlined the current challenges organizations face with certificate visibility, and explained how Qualys can help with CertView, a free app available now.

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