The do’s and don’ts of SSL certificate monitoring

Can you imagine your website throwing a security warning—just because an SSL/TLS certificate expired? What a nightmare, right?

Applications Manager’s SSL/TLS certificate monitoring helps you avoid that. It helps you track your certificate expiration dates, understand configuration issues, pinpoint vulnerabilities, and get alerts before it’s too late. Whether you manage one site or many, monitoring your SSL/TLS certificates helps you ensure smooth, secure data transactions at any given time.

Why should you monitor your SSL/TLS certificates?

Monitoring your SSL certificates ensures a secure and trustworthy digital presence. Here’s what happens when you fail to keep a valid SSL certificate:

  • Loss of security: SSL certificates encrypt data transactions between websites and users, securing sensitive data and authentication passkeys like PINs. Invalid certificates provide encryption too, but authentication becomes faulty, leaving user accounts and data prone to security breaches, privacy issues, and phishing attacks.

  • Loss of trust: Web browsers throw a security warning on redirection to websites with invalid or expired SSL certificates. This affects user trust and site traffic, often causing loss of revenue.

  • Search engine penalties: Search engines prioritize websites with valid SSL certificates. An expired or invalid certificate can impact SEO rankings, reducing organic traffic.

  • Operational issues: APIs and services relying on HTTPS fail to operate alongside sites with invalid certificates, causing 401 errors. This can cause critical issues like payment failure and failed inter-site redirections.

Some real-world incidents 

Do you remember the day when Microsoft Teams threw a login error in our faces and numerous software agencies had to declare a day off for their employees? Turns out the root cause was an expired client authentication certificate. A similar incident happened to beloved audio streaming platform Spotify, when the domain crashed because of an expired wildcard certificate. These incidents show even major companies can get caught off guard. Many of these incidents go unreported; these are just the well-known ones. So, how can you avoid similar situations?

Here are some do’s and don’ts of monitoring SSL/TLS certificates:

Do’s of SSL certificate monitoring

  1. Monitor expiry dates from time to time. Configure alerts before expiry to renew certificates on time.

  2. Ensure SSL/TLS certificates haven’t been revoked by the certificate authority (CA).

  3. Verify that all intermediate and root certificates are valid.

  4. Make sure that all TLS configurations use strong ciphers and protocols.

  5. Verify whether the certificate matches the domain it secures.

  6. Validate certificate installation on all required servers.

Don’ts of SSL certificate monitoring:

  1. Don’t ignore expiry warnings. It can lead to unwanted downtime and security risks.

  2. Don’t use self-signed certificates for public services. Browsers don’t vouch for self-signed certificates.

  3. Avoid outdated protocols to dodge security vulnerabilities.

  4. Don’t overlook wildcard and SAN certificates. An expired wildcard certificate can send your entire domain south.

  5. Don’t ignore certificate pinning issues. Ensure timely updates to avoid app failures.

  6. Don’t forget to revoke compromised certificates. A keyword compromise can lead to security breaches and phishing.

How can Applications Manager help?

Applications Manager helps you monitor the following to ensure the validity of your business critical SSL/TLS certificates:

  • Certificate validity: Applications Manager keeps track of the expiry countdown and the validity status of your certificates, providing you an update on the certificate status at any given time.

  • Issuer details: The tool registers the host or domain issuing the certificate, the name of the organization, and the unit of the organization associated with the certificate. This helps you ensure the authenticity of the issuer.

  • Recipient details: It also monitors the details of organizations to which the certificate is issued, its common name, and its SHA-256 fingerprint. This helps in ensuring that the domain is secured with valid SSL/TLS certificates.

  • Cipher and protocol details: Monitoring the vulnerability status, cryptographic components, protocol details, and cipher details helps you ensure that your certificates are not vulnerable to security threats.

Applications Manager’s smart alerting system helps you configure alarms for validity expiration, problematic certificates, and domain mismatch. This helps you stay informed on certificate expiry details and invalid certificate authorization.

Get started on SSL/TLS certificate monitoring with Applications Manager now by downloading a 30-day, free trial.