Here’s What Mismanaged Digital Certificates Are Costing Organizations

A new report from DigiCert highlights the growing complexities in cert management.

Digital certificates are a key component of modern cybersecurity — essential for organizations to establish secure and trusted connections for websites, devices, web servers, code, software, email and more.

However, managing certificates is a complex and sometimes costly issue for organizations, according to a new report from DigiCert.

DigiCert released findings from its Trust Pulse Survey:

• 45 percent of survey respondents said that their organizations experienced “service downtime” from certificate-related incidents in the last year.
• 37.5 percent said outages were caused by expired certificates.
• 31 percent said their organization experienced financial losses between $50,000 and $250,000 due to expired certificates. 18.5 percent said their loss exceeded $250,000 due to certificate issues.
• 60 percent said they manage between 1,000 –10,000 certificates.
• 56.6 percent said they were concerned about tracking certificate expiration dates.

Managing digital certs has also become more complex on the heels of several big announcements.

In April, the CA/Browser (CA/B) Forum decided to reduce the maximum validity term of SSL/TLS certificates to 47 days by 2029.

Also, last year, Google announced that it will no longer trust Entrust TLS certificates as of Nov. 1, 2024.

Additionally, DigiCert’s report revealed concerns among CISOs and other security leaders over certificates. Sixty-two percent of them cited customer trust as a top reason for successful cert management. Sixty-one percent and 56.6 percent cited compliance and keeping up with expiration dates as the biggest worries around certificates.

According to DigiCert: “By 2029, major browsers will enforce 47-day certificate lifespans, while the push toward quantum-safe algorithms will break legacy PKI configurations and overwhelm manual processes.”

“PKI certificates are the invisible backbone of the world’s digital civilization, and when they are mismanaged, the organizations feel it,” said Ashley Stevenson, vice president of product and solutions marketing at DigiCert in a news release. “The survey findings make one thing clear: manual approaches can’t keep up with the scale, speed, and scrutiny organizations are under today. Enterprises need automation and visibility to reduce risk, maintain compliance, and preserve customer trust. Certificate management is no longer a tactical task—it’s a strategic necessity worthy of the same maturity and governance as other foundational disciplines like identity management.”