AppViewX and Citrix Joint Solution
Automating Certificate Management for Citrix FAS with AppViewX AVX ONE
Securing user and machine identities while enabling seamless authentication is critical, especially for organizations operating across hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures. The Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) plays a central role in this process, acting as a privileged service that integrates with Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) or federated identity providers, such as ADFS or SAML, to issue certificates for users dynamically. These certificates enable users to log in to Citrix StoreFront, XenApp, and XenDesktop virtual environments as if they were using physical smart cards.
FAS has become an essential component for securing access to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) by enabling strong, certificate-based authentication without the complexity of managing physical tokens.
However, as organizations scale their Citrix environments, managing certificates across hundreds or thousands of users becomes overwhelming. Manual processes create risk, complexity, and administrative overhead. AppViewX addresses these challenges through automated certificate lifecycle management, ensuring authentication across Citrix environments remains secure, reliable, and fully policy-compliant at scale.
The following diagram illustrates how Citrix FAS integrates with a Certificate Authority (CA) to provide services to StoreFront, XenApp, and XenDesktop Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs).
Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) Challenges in Citrix FAS Environments
As organizations scale their Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) environments, the number of certificates grows rapidly, and with it, operational and security challenges.
- Managing Certificate Lifecycles: In large Citrix deployments, thousands of user and machine certificates need to be issued, renewed, and revoked on time. Doing this manually is slow, error-prone, and resource-intensive, increasing the risk of unexpected expirations that can block access to virtual desktops and apps.
- Ensuring Compliance: Organizations must meet stringent security standards and regulatory mandates for encryption, certificate usage, and PKI practices. Without a centralized system, ensuring compliance across multiple CAs, certificate templates, and environments becomes complex.
- Scaling Across Platforms: Modern VDI deployments often span on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, with a mix of Windows and Linux VDAs. A single, unified CLM system is essential to manage certificates consistently across all these platforms.
How AppViewX AVX ONE Simplifies Certificate Lifecycle Management in Citrix FAS
Securing Citrix VDI environments requires reliable certificate lifecycle management across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. AppViewX AVX ONE CLM delivers this through holistic visibility, end-to-end automation, and policy-driven control of certificates, ensuring trust across machines, workloads, applications, and cloud services.
Its industry-leading features include smart discovery, actionable insights dashboards (such as 47-Day TLS, PQC, and Enterprise Crypto-Scoring), closed-loop automation workflows, intuitive self-service, and zero-touch policy enforcement. By streamlining CLM for all certificate types across leading public and private Certificate Authorities (CAs), AVX ONE CLM enhances enterprise-wide crypto-agility, mitigates machine identity risks, and empowers cross-functional teams to focus on innovation and growth.
How the Integration Works
When a user attempts to log on to a Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA), the logon request is sent to the Federated Authentication Service (FAS). After authenticating the user through Active Directory (AD), FAS connects to the AppViewX AVX ONE platform via a cloud connector that resides in the same Active Directory domain as FAS.
AppViewX then issues the required certificate, which is attached to the VDA machine. The Windows domain then recognizes this as a standard smart card authentication, allowing the user to log in securely.
Whenever Citrix FAS requests either a CA certificate or a user certificate, the AppViewX cloud connector receives the request in DCOM/DCERPC format. It parses and processes the request, then forwards it to the AppViewX application using standard REST API calls to obtain the certificate from the appropriate Certificate Authority (CA).
The necessary certificate template or profile must be preconfigured within the CA context, enabling AppViewX AVX ONE CLM to issue the certificate in the correct format with all required Extended Key Usage (EKU) and Key Usage (KU) fields.
All issued certificates are automatically logged within the AVX ONE platform. Administrators can configure expiry alerts and auto-renewal policies to ensure certificates are monitored and auto-renewed before expiration, maintaining continuous authentication and minimizing operational risk.
Benefits of the Citrix FAS and AppViewX AVX ONE CLM Integration
The integration of AppViewX AVX ONE CLM with Citrix FAS solves critical CLM challenges. Together, they deliver a unified, automated, and compliant certificate lifecycle management solution purpose-built for Citrix VDI environments.
- Centralized and Automated Certificate Lifecycle Management: AVX ONE CLM provides a single platform to manage all certificates issued through Citrix FAS across Windows and Linux VDAs. It provides complete visibility into certificate expiry dates, trust chains, and configurations, while automating critical processes, including issuance, renewal, and revocation. This eliminates manual effort, reduces administrative overhead, and ensures certificates are always valid and trusted.
- Seamless User Experience and Continuous Access: Expired or mismanaged certificates can cause authentication failures and disrupt user logins to Citrix VDAs. AVX ONE CLM automates certificate renewals and enforces proactive alerts, ensuring users always have a valid and trusted certificate to seamlessly authenticate without disruptions. This results in a more consistent and secure user experience.
- Multi CA Flexibility: For Citrix environments that require certificates from multiple Certificate Authorities (CAs), AVX ONE CLM serves as a unified proxy for Citrix FAS, retrieving certificates from a broad range of public and private CAs. This eliminates dependency on Microsoft CA alone and extends flexibility for organizations using custom CA hierarchies.
- Security, Compliance, and Policy Enforcement: AVX ONE CLM enforces strict enterprise-grade PKI policies to ensure all certificates used by Citrix FAS comply with corporate and regulatory mandates. Certificates are issued with correct templates, including KU and EKU fields, to maintain consistency in authentication policies across environments and strengthen Zero Trust architectures.
- Scalable for Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments: Whether deploying on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, AVX ONE CLM scales effortlessly across thousands of Citrix VDAs. It allows Citrix FAS to issue and manage certificates across various VDAs, including both Windows and Linux platforms. It supports large Citrix deployments with hundreds or thousands of users, ensuring scalability.
- Increased Security and Compliance: As enterprises increasingly adopt Zero Trust models, protecting digital identities with strict cryptographic policies becomes crucial. The integration of AVX ONE CLM with Citrix FAS ensures that certificates are issued with correct templates, KU, and EKU fields, maintaining consistency in authentication policies across the board. This helps adhere to corporate policies and regulatory requirements, minimizing vulnerabilities and reducing compliance risks.
The integration of Citrix FAS with AVX ONE CLM transforms how organizations manage certificates in their VDI environments. By improving visibility, fully automating certificate lifecycle management, and implementing policy-driven control, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of authentication failures, avoid costly outages, reduce administrative overhead, maintain compliance, and strengthen their security posture.
About Citrix System, Inc.
Citrix Systems is a global leader in secure access and virtualization technologies that empower organizations to deliver applications and desktops seamlessly to users anywhere. Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) is a key component of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, enabling secure, passwordless single sign-on by integrating with enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). FAS simplifies authentication management while enhancing user experience and security across virtual environments. Citrix currently serves more than 330,000 organizations worldwide and is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, visit www.citrix.com.