Uncategorized
Cryptography plays a critical role in securing data, protecting privacy, and maintaining trust across systems. From securing web traffic and APIs to software updates and IoT communications, digital certificates and keys underpin modern cybersecurity infrastructure.
Yet, many organizations are struggling to manage cryptographic assets efficiently. A complex digital landscape, fragmented tools, manual processes, and evolving threats, such as the threat of quantum computing to current cryptography, are making certificate lifecycle management (CLM) increasingly challenging and risky.
To thrive in this environment, enterprises need crypto-agility: the ability to quickly adapt to cryptographic changes with minimal disruption to operations or security.
At AppViewX, we’ve helped leading global enterprises move from reactive, disjointed certificate management to proactive, scalable, and resilient cryptographic operations, guided by our Path to Crypto-Agility, powered by AVX ONE CLM.
AppViewX AVX ONE CLM is a comprehensive certificate lifecycle management solution that helps you discover, inventory, manage, and govern all public and private trust certificates in your infrastructure—all in one place. With complete visibility, end-to-end automation, and robust policy control, AVX ONE CLM streamlines certificate operations across machines, applications, workloads, and cloud services, in turn, strengthening the digital security posture.
Here’s how you can achieve crypto-agility across four stages with AVX ONE CLM.
Stage 1: Visibility—Establishing the Foundation
Why It Matters:
You can’t protect what you can’t see.
The starting point of crypto-agility is complete visibility into all digital certificates and keys across your organization. A lack of visibility leads to blind spots, which can result in expired certificates, service outages, and compliance violations.
Common Challenges:
- Unknown or “shadow” certificates scattered across systems
- Outages caused by missed certificate renewals
- Lack of ownership and accountability for certificates
How AVX ONE CLM Helps:
- Automatically discovers all public and private trust certificates from multiple Certificate Authorities (CAs) across all endpoints
- Consolidates discovered certificates into a centralized certificate inventory enriched with valuable metadata, such as expiration date, key size, algorithm, and location
- Provides insights into anomalies and orphaned or unused certificates
Business Impact:
A holistic, always-updated view of your cryptographic estate—your single source of truth. With complete visibility, your teams can proactively manage certificate lifecycles, prevent outages, and eliminate unnecessary downtime.
Certificate Lifecycle Management with Visibility, Control and Insights – All in One Place
Stage 2: Advanced Automation at Scale—Empowering Developers and Operations Teams
Why It Matters:
Security shouldn’t be a bottleneck. With the right tools, it becomes an enabler.
As development cycles accelerate, especially with DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, the demand for digital certificates has skyrocketed. However, manual certificate processes simply can’t keep up. DevOps teams need rapid, secure methods for provisioning and deploying certificates without relying solely on central IT teams. Once issued, certificates must also be deployed, installed, and updated across a diverse range of systems. Automation is the key to both speed and security in this process.
Common Challenges:
- Long wait times for certificate issuance requests
- Human errors in provisioning, configuration, and renewals
- Lack of visibility or control for development and operations teams
- Complex hybrid environments with inconsistent tooling
How AVX ONE CLM Helps:
- Provides certificate self-service for developers and app teams to request, renew, and revoke certificates on demand
- Automates certificate approval workflows, reducing dependency on central IT
- Seamlessly integrates with DevOps toolchains like Jenkins, GitLab, Ansible, and Kubernetes
- Pushes certificates automatically to endpoints like load balancers, servers, containers, and IoT devices
- Enables zero-touch renewals and deployment (even binds the certificates to the correct application)
- Enables rollback and deployment validation to avoid misconfigurations and outages
Business Impact:
Faster innovation, fewer bottlenecks, and fewer incidents—all backed by secure, end-to-end certificate lifecycle automation. Whether you’re supporting agile development or maintaining hybrid infrastructure, AVX ONE CLM helps you move quickly without compromising security or compliance.
Stage 3: Compliance and Control—Laying Down Governance
Why It Matters:
Automation without governance leads to chaos.
Automating your certificates is only half the battle. The next step is to enforce policies that manage them securely and consistently. Without standardized policies, certificate issuance and usage become ad-hoc and error-prone. Regulatory frameworks, such as NIST, PCI DSS, and NIS2 also demand formal cryptography governance.
Common Challenges:
- Disparate CAs with inconsistent processes
- No centralized enforcement of cryptographic policies
- Gaps in proving compliance during audits
How AVX ONE CLM Helps:
- Define enterprise-wide policies for certificate issuance, key strength, validity periods, and approved algorithms
- Enforce governance consistently across teams, regions, and environments
- Continuously monitor for policy violations and trigger alerts for quick remediation before issues become incidents
Business Impact:
With automated policy enforcement, compliance becomes part of your everyday operations. Audits are simpler, trust is stronger, and security risks are reduced—all while preserving the speed and agility your business needs.
Stage 4: Crypto-Agility—Building a Future-Proof Enterprise
Why It Matters:
Crypto-agility is not just about speed—it’s about resilience
The cryptographic landscape is shifting fast. TLS certificate lifespans are shrinking drastically, widely used encryption algorithms like RSA and ECC are nearing deprecation, the urgency around post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration is intensifying, and compliance mandates are constantly evolving.
To stay secure and compliant through these changes, your organization must be ready to adapt without scrambling. That’s what crypto-agility enables you to do: pivot without panic.
Common Challenges:
- Legacy systems with hardcoded keys and outdated algorithms
- Fragmented CLM tools that slow down cryptographic transitions
- Lack of readiness for PQC migration
- Difficulty scaling cryptographic operations across large, hybrid environments
How AVX ONE CLM Helps:
- Centralizes visibility of all cryptographic assets—certificates, keys, algorithms—to help you plan effectively for upgrades and migrations
- Offers flexible, advanced automation with deep integrations to execute cryptographic changes at scale, seamlessly and accurately
- Enforces policy-driven governance to maintain consistency, compliance, and control throughout every transition
Business Impact:
In a world where cryptographic change is constant, crypto-agility is a necessity for resilience, compliance, and long-term security. Whether you’re facing a tough audit, dealing with expired certificates, or preparing for a quantum-secure future, you need a CLM strategy that’s built for change.
With AppViewX AVX ONE CLM, you get complete visibility, intelligent automation, and centralized control—everything you need to future-proof your cryptographic operations and reduce risk without slowing down your business.
Ready to begin your crypto-agility journey?
Download Moving the Needle on Crypto-Agility Solution Brief
Talk to an Expert
Request a Live Demo
Uncategorized
A SmartThings user shares how one costly mistake led to a simple, smart solution
The post The Freezer Fiasco That Made Me Smarter (And Saved My Sanity) appeared first on SmartThings Blog.
Uncategorized
When outages hit, and teams scramble to trace the expired or misconfigured certificate that brought the system down this time—the default response is often, “We need automation.”
But automation alone doesn’t fix the root problem. It’s not a strategy—it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Modernizing PKI and certificate lifecycle management (CLM) requires more than a tool that auto-renews certificates. It requires clarity, coordination, and a solution that supports both current needs and future realities.
In this blog, we break down the most common (and costly) challenges holding back PKI and CLM strategies and share five critical steps to help you move from chaos to crypto-agility.
Step 1: Define Clear Objectives (No, “We Need Automation” Doesn’t Count)
When evaluating PKI providers or investing in CLM tools, many organizations get stuck at the starting line—unable to move beyond high-level goals to clear, actionable requirements.
Take certificate lifecycle automation. It is a common goal—and a vague one. Most teams agree it’s needed, but few can define what they want to automate and where it should apply. Is the goal end-to-end certificate renewals? Better governance? Faster provisioning for DevOps?
This lack of clarity often becomes the first major roadblock. A recent Gartner Buyers’ Guide to PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management notes:
“Many organizations define certificate automation as a key requirement and many tools support certificate automation. However, certificate automation alone does not adequately describe the requirement in a way that will facilitate evaluation and differentiation between solutions.”
As mentioned earlier, automation is just one piece of effective CLM—there are other critical aspects that also need attention. That’s why the real starting point is defining the specific problems you’re trying to solve, translating those into requirements, and mapping them to desired platform features.
Step 2: Fix the Foundations
A PKI or CLM strategy is only as good as the architecture supporting it. And for most organizations, this architecture needs some serious refresh.
One PKI for all or Many?
PKI today supports a wide range of use cases—from workloads and devices to applications and user identities. Any effort to modernize PKI and CLM should take all of them into account.
A common challenge: striking the right balance between running a single PKI for all use cases versus spinning up separate PKIs. Too much consolidation increases operational complexity and risk. Too much fragmentation creates silos and inefficiencies. Getting trust boundaries right is crucial for long-term scalability, security, and agility.
Gartner outlines basic principles for defining PKI trust boundaries without overengineering your architecture.
The On-Prem vs. SaaS Decision
While cloud-based PKI and CLM offerings are on the rise, on-prem deployments continue to be a part of the mix. Choosing the right model is a foundational step in modernizing your PKI and CLM strategy.
Traditional single-tenant, on-prem models offer control but come with trade-offs, such as slower access to updates and security patches, higher infrastructure and support costs, limited scalability, longer deployment cycles, and less agility.
Modern multi-tenant SaaS platforms, on the other hand, offer continuous updates, centralized management, instant scalability, and lower total cost of ownership.
There’s no one-size-fits-all. Highly regulated industries may prefer control, while cloud-native teams might prioritize speed and simplicity.
Gartner presents a pros and cons matrix to help evaluate the best fit for your organization—factoring in cost, control, functionality, long-term flexibility, and others.
Step 3: Pick the Right Solution
Once your strategy is clear, the next big decision is choosing the right solution—and that’s where many teams hit a crossroads. Here are two key considerations to help you evaluate what’s right for your environment.
Breadth or Depth? Finding the Right Fit
One of the most common strategy decisions teams face is whether to go with a single vendor for all use cases or combine best-of-breed tools for different use cases.
Vendor rationalization, consolidating PKI and CLM under one provider offers centralized control, easier procurement, and a single-pane-of-glass experience across use cases.
On the other hand, best-of-breed tools often bring deeper CLM functionality in specific areas—especially where advanced capabilities matter most, like:
- Deeper certificate discovery
- Insights on certificate-related vulnerabilities
- Advanced automation covering even the last-mile endpoint certificate binding
In either case, check if the solution can handle your most critical use cases with intelligence and flexibility. Don’t just go with what looks unified but with what delivers actual value.
Gartner provides a helpful breakdown of vendor capabilities across both breadth and depth to help spot where specific solutions shine or fall short.
Don’t Skip the Proof of Concept
A proof of concept isn’t just a formality—it’s your best shot at a reality check.
Once you’ve shortlisted CLM solutions, run a POC to test for your key requirements, such as the extent of certificate discovery, flexibility of automation workflows, and integration with your existing tools and processes.
A good POC will reveal what the sales pitch can’t. The better you test now, the fewer surprises later.
Step 4: Plan the Spend and the Savings
When evaluating PKI and CLM solutions, cost is another strategic factor. Licensing models vary widely across vendors. Take into account:
- Cost models — per certificate, per action, or enterprise agreements
- Wildcard/SAN usage and pricing differences
- Licensing flexibility
Most transitions involve running old and new systems in parallel, such as migrating PKIs, introducing automation, or phasing out manual processes. This means planning for temporary overhead. At the same time, don’t overlook cost savings automation delivers, eliminating outages, manual effort, and non-compliance fines.
A smart budgeting approach balances initial costs against long-term resilience and agility.
Step 5: Align Your Teams. Think Long-Term.
A successful PKI and CLM strategy isn’t static—it has to evolve with new technologies, emerging threats, and shifting compliance requirements. Here are two essentials to ensure that:
Build A Machine Identity Working Group
PKI and CLM cut across multiple functions, including security, infrastructure, DevOps, cloud. No single team typically owns it all. That’s where a machine identity working group adds real value.
Bringing together stakeholders across teams into one working group helps clarify ownership, enforce policies, and drive consistent practices across your certificate landscape. Whether you’re managing one PKI or many, it keeps decisions aligned and out of silos.
Future-Proof with Crypto Visibility and Agility
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t just about solving today’s problems—it’s about staying ready for what’s next.
With the CA/B Forum set to enforce 47-day validity by 2029, frequent renewals will become the norm. Crypto-agility, built on visibility, automation, and policy control, will be critical in preventing outages.
Post-quantum cryptography readiness is also on the clock. With NIST planning to deprecate RSA and ECC algorithms by 2030, you need solutions that support hybrid certificates, trust store management, and PQC certificate issuance for private trust.
And with regulations like DORA and PCI DSS now explicitly calling out cryptographic controls, crypto-agility is a must.
Future-proofing starts with choosing a platform that has crypto-agility built-in so you’re ready for what’s next.
Final Thought: Strategy First, Then the Right Solution
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t about a technical refresh; it’s a strategic shift that sets the stage for long-term resilience. From defining clear goals and aligning teams to selecting the right solution, every decision you make now helps avoid outages, reduce risk, and stay compliant down the line.
Whether you’re refining your strategy or just getting started, one thing’s clear: visibility, automation, and agility are no longer optional—they’re the foundation.
With the PKI landscape rapidly evolving with 47-day TLS certificate lifespans, PQC, and new compliance mandates, the clock is ticking. Now’s the time to get your strategy and foundation in place.
If you’re ready to modernize your PKI and CLM strategies, AppViewX offers the most advanced certificate lifecycle management and private PKI platform. Reach out to an AppViewX expert today to see how we can help you build crypto-agility and future-proof your security.
Uncategorized
A SmartThings user shares how one costly mistake led to a simple, smart solution
The post The Freezer Fiasco That Made Me Smarter (And Saved My Sanity) appeared first on SmartThings Blog.
Uncategorized
When outages hit, and teams scramble to trace the expired or misconfigured certificate that brought the system down this time—the default response is often, “We need automation.”
But automation alone doesn’t fix the root problem. It’s not a strategy—it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Modernizing PKI and certificate lifecycle management (CLM) requires more than a tool that auto-renews certificates. It requires clarity, coordination, and a solution that supports both current needs and future realities.
In this blog, we break down the most common (and costly) challenges holding back PKI and CLM strategies and share five critical steps to help you move from chaos to crypto-agility.
Step 1: Define Clear Objectives (No, “We Need Automation” Doesn’t Count)
When evaluating PKI providers or investing in CLM tools, many organizations get stuck at the starting line—unable to move beyond high-level goals to clear, actionable requirements.
Take certificate lifecycle automation. It is a common goal—and a vague one. Most teams agree it’s needed, but few can define what they want to automate and where it should apply. Is the goal end-to-end certificate renewals? Better governance? Faster provisioning for DevOps?
This lack of clarity often becomes the first major roadblock. A recent Gartner Buyers’ Guide to PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management notes:
“Many organizations define certificate automation as a key requirement and many tools support certificate automation. However, certificate automation alone does not adequately describe the requirement in a way that will facilitate evaluation and differentiation between solutions.”
As mentioned earlier, automation is just one piece of effective CLM—there are other critical aspects that also need attention. That’s why the real starting point is defining the specific problems you’re trying to solve, translating those into requirements, and mapping them to desired platform features.
Step 2: Fix the Foundations
A PKI or CLM strategy is only as good as the architecture supporting it. And for most organizations, this architecture needs some serious refresh.
One PKI for all or Many?
PKI today supports a wide range of use cases—from workloads and devices to applications and user identities. Any effort to modernize PKI and CLM should take all of them into account.
A common challenge: striking the right balance between running a single PKI for all use cases versus spinning up separate PKIs. Too much consolidation increases operational complexity and risk. Too much fragmentation creates silos and inefficiencies. Getting trust boundaries right is crucial for long-term scalability, security, and agility.
Gartner outlines basic principles for defining PKI trust boundaries without overengineering your architecture.
The On-Prem vs. SaaS Decision
While cloud-based PKI and CLM offerings are on the rise, on-prem deployments continue to be a part of the mix. Choosing the right model is a foundational step in modernizing your PKI and CLM strategy.
Traditional single-tenant, on-prem models offer control but come with trade-offs, such as slower access to updates and security patches, higher infrastructure and support costs, limited scalability, longer deployment cycles, and less agility.
Modern multi-tenant SaaS platforms, on the other hand, offer continuous updates, centralized management, instant scalability, and lower total cost of ownership.
There’s no one-size-fits-all. Highly regulated industries may prefer control, while cloud-native teams might prioritize speed and simplicity.
Gartner presents a pros and cons matrix to help evaluate the best fit for your organization—factoring in cost, control, functionality, long-term flexibility, and others.
Step 3: Pick the Right Solution
Once your strategy is clear, the next big decision is choosing the right solution—and that’s where many teams hit a crossroads. Here are two key considerations to help you evaluate what’s right for your environment.
Breadth or Depth? Finding the Right Fit
One of the most common strategy decisions teams face is whether to go with a single vendor for all use cases or combine best-of-breed tools for different use cases.
Vendor rationalization, consolidating PKI and CLM under one provider offers centralized control, easier procurement, and a single-pane-of-glass experience across use cases.
On the other hand, best-of-breed tools often bring deeper CLM functionality in specific areas—especially where advanced capabilities matter most, like:
- Deeper certificate discovery
- Insights on certificate-related vulnerabilities
- Advanced automation covering even the last-mile endpoint certificate binding
In either case, check if the solution can handle your most critical use cases with intelligence and flexibility. Don’t just go with what looks unified but with what delivers actual value.
Gartner provides a helpful breakdown of vendor capabilities across both breadth and depth to help spot where specific solutions shine or fall short.
Don’t Skip the Proof of Concept
A proof of concept isn’t just a formality—it’s your best shot at a reality check.
Once you’ve shortlisted CLM solutions, run a POC to test for your key requirements, such as the extent of certificate discovery, flexibility of automation workflows, and integration with your existing tools and processes.
A good POC will reveal what the sales pitch can’t. The better you test now, the fewer surprises later.
Step 4: Plan the Spend and the Savings
When evaluating PKI and CLM solutions, cost is another strategic factor. Licensing models vary widely across vendors. Take into account:
- Cost models — per certificate, per action, or enterprise agreements
- Wildcard/SAN usage and pricing differences
- Licensing flexibility
Most transitions involve running old and new systems in parallel, such as migrating PKIs, introducing automation, or phasing out manual processes. This means planning for temporary overhead. At the same time, don’t overlook cost savings automation delivers, eliminating outages, manual effort, and non-compliance fines.
A smart budgeting approach balances initial costs against long-term resilience and agility.
Step 5: Align Your Teams. Think Long-Term.
A successful PKI and CLM strategy isn’t static—it has to evolve with new technologies, emerging threats, and shifting compliance requirements. Here are two essentials to ensure that:
Build A Machine Identity Working Group
PKI and CLM cut across multiple functions, including security, infrastructure, DevOps, cloud. No single team typically owns it all. That’s where a machine identity working group adds real value.
Bringing together stakeholders across teams into one working group helps clarify ownership, enforce policies, and drive consistent practices across your certificate landscape. Whether you’re managing one PKI or many, it keeps decisions aligned and out of silos.
Future-Proof with Crypto Visibility and Agility
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t just about solving today’s problems—it’s about staying ready for what’s next.
With the CA/B Forum set to enforce 47-day validity by 2029, frequent renewals will become the norm. Crypto-agility, built on visibility, automation, and policy control, will be critical in preventing outages.
Post-quantum cryptography readiness is also on the clock. With NIST planning to deprecate RSA and ECC algorithms by 2030, you need solutions that support hybrid certificates, trust store management, and PQC certificate issuance for private trust.
And with regulations like DORA and PCI DSS now explicitly calling out cryptographic controls, crypto-agility is a must.
Future-proofing starts with choosing a platform that has crypto-agility built-in so you’re ready for what’s next.
Final Thought: Strategy First, Then the Right Solution
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t about a technical refresh; it’s a strategic shift that sets the stage for long-term resilience. From defining clear goals and aligning teams to selecting the right solution, every decision you make now helps avoid outages, reduce risk, and stay compliant down the line.
Whether you’re refining your strategy or just getting started, one thing’s clear: visibility, automation, and agility are no longer optional—they’re the foundation.
With the PKI landscape rapidly evolving with 47-day TLS certificate lifespans, PQC, and new compliance mandates, the clock is ticking. Now’s the time to get your strategy and foundation in place.
If you’re ready to modernize your PKI and CLM strategies, AppViewX offers the most advanced certificate lifecycle management and private PKI platform. Reach out to an AppViewX expert today to see how we can help you build crypto-agility and future-proof your security.
Uncategorized
When outages hit, and teams scramble to trace the expired or misconfigured certificate that brought the system down this time—the default response is often, “We need automation.”
But automation alone doesn’t fix the root problem. It’s not a strategy—it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Modernizing PKI and certificate lifecycle management (CLM) requires more than a tool that auto-renews certificates. It requires clarity, coordination, and a solution that supports both current needs and future realities.
In this blog, we break down the most common (and costly) challenges holding back PKI and CLM strategies and share five critical steps to help you move from chaos to crypto-agility.
Step 1: Define Clear Objectives (No, “We Need Automation” Doesn’t Count)
When evaluating PKI providers or investing in CLM tools, many organizations get stuck at the starting line—unable to move beyond high-level goals to clear, actionable requirements.
Take certificate lifecycle automation. It is a common goal—and a vague one. Most teams agree it’s needed, but few can define what they want to automate and where it should apply. Is the goal end-to-end certificate renewals? Better governance? Faster provisioning for DevOps?
This lack of clarity often becomes the first major roadblock. A recent Gartner Buyers’ Guide to PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management notes:
“Many organizations define certificate automation as a key requirement and many tools support certificate automation. However, certificate automation alone does not adequately describe the requirement in a way that will facilitate evaluation and differentiation between solutions.”
As mentioned earlier, automation is just one piece of effective CLM—there are other critical aspects that also need attention. That’s why the real starting point is defining the specific problems you’re trying to solve, translating those into requirements, and mapping them to desired platform features.
Step 2: Fix the Foundations
A PKI or CLM strategy is only as good as the architecture supporting it. And for most organizations, this architecture needs some serious refresh.
One PKI for all or Many?
PKI today supports a wide range of use cases—from workloads and devices to applications and user identities. Any effort to modernize PKI and CLM should take all of them into account.
A common challenge: striking the right balance between running a single PKI for all use cases versus spinning up separate PKIs. Too much consolidation increases operational complexity and risk. Too much fragmentation creates silos and inefficiencies. Getting trust boundaries right is crucial for long-term scalability, security, and agility.
Gartner outlines basic principles for defining PKI trust boundaries without overengineering your architecture.
The On-Prem vs. SaaS Decision
While cloud-based PKI and CLM offerings are on the rise, on-prem deployments continue to be a part of the mix. Choosing the right model is a foundational step in modernizing your PKI and CLM strategy.
Traditional single-tenant, on-prem models offer control but come with trade-offs, such as slower access to updates and security patches, higher infrastructure and support costs, limited scalability, longer deployment cycles, and less agility.
Modern multi-tenant SaaS platforms, on the other hand, offer continuous updates, centralized management, instant scalability, and lower total cost of ownership.
There’s no one-size-fits-all. Highly regulated industries may prefer control, while cloud-native teams might prioritize speed and simplicity.
Gartner presents a pros and cons matrix to help evaluate the best fit for your organization—factoring in cost, control, functionality, long-term flexibility, and others.
Step 3: Pick the Right Solution
Once your strategy is clear, the next big decision is choosing the right solution—and that’s where many teams hit a crossroads. Here are two key considerations to help you evaluate what’s right for your environment.
Breadth or Depth? Finding the Right Fit
One of the most common strategy decisions teams face is whether to go with a single vendor for all use cases or combine best-of-breed tools for different use cases.
Vendor rationalization, consolidating PKI and CLM under one provider offers centralized control, easier procurement, and a single-pane-of-glass experience across use cases.
On the other hand, best-of-breed tools often bring deeper CLM functionality in specific areas—especially where advanced capabilities matter most, like:
- Deeper certificate discovery
- Insights on certificate-related vulnerabilities
- Advanced automation covering even the last-mile endpoint certificate binding
In either case, check if the solution can handle your most critical use cases with intelligence and flexibility. Don’t just go with what looks unified but with what delivers actual value.
Gartner provides a helpful breakdown of vendor capabilities across both breadth and depth to help spot where specific solutions shine or fall short.
Don’t Skip the Proof of Concept
A proof of concept isn’t just a formality—it’s your best shot at a reality check.
Once you’ve shortlisted CLM solutions, run a POC to test for your key requirements, such as the extent of certificate discovery, flexibility of automation workflows, and integration with your existing tools and processes.
A good POC will reveal what the sales pitch can’t. The better you test now, the fewer surprises later.
Step 4: Plan the Spend and the Savings
When evaluating PKI and CLM solutions, cost is another strategic factor. Licensing models vary widely across vendors. Take into account:
- Cost models — per certificate, per action, or enterprise agreements
- Wildcard/SAN usage and pricing differences
- Licensing flexibility
Most transitions involve running old and new systems in parallel, such as migrating PKIs, introducing automation, or phasing out manual processes. This means planning for temporary overhead. At the same time, don’t overlook cost savings automation delivers, eliminating outages, manual effort, and non-compliance fines.
A smart budgeting approach balances initial costs against long-term resilience and agility.
Step 5: Align Your Teams. Think Long-Term.
A successful PKI and CLM strategy isn’t static—it has to evolve with new technologies, emerging threats, and shifting compliance requirements. Here are two essentials to ensure that:
Build A Machine Identity Working Group
PKI and CLM cut across multiple functions, including security, infrastructure, DevOps, cloud. No single team typically owns it all. That’s where a machine identity working group adds real value.
Bringing together stakeholders across teams into one working group helps clarify ownership, enforce policies, and drive consistent practices across your certificate landscape. Whether you’re managing one PKI or many, it keeps decisions aligned and out of silos.
Future-Proof with Crypto Visibility and Agility
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t just about solving today’s problems—it’s about staying ready for what’s next.
With the CA/B Forum set to enforce 47-day validity by 2029, frequent renewals will become the norm. Crypto-agility, built on visibility, automation, and policy control, will be critical in preventing outages.
Post-quantum cryptography readiness is also on the clock. With NIST planning to deprecate RSA and ECC algorithms by 2030, you need solutions that support hybrid certificates, trust store management, and PQC certificate issuance for private trust.
And with regulations like DORA and PCI DSS now explicitly calling out cryptographic controls, crypto-agility is a must.
Future-proofing starts with choosing a platform that has crypto-agility built-in so you’re ready for what’s next.
Final Thought: Strategy First, Then the Right Solution
Modernizing PKI and CLM isn’t about a technical refresh; it’s a strategic shift that sets the stage for long-term resilience. From defining clear goals and aligning teams to selecting the right solution, every decision you make now helps avoid outages, reduce risk, and stay compliant down the line.
Whether you’re refining your strategy or just getting started, one thing’s clear: visibility, automation, and agility are no longer optional—they’re the foundation.
With the PKI landscape rapidly evolving with 47-day TLS certificate lifespans, PQC, and new compliance mandates, the clock is ticking. Now’s the time to get your strategy and foundation in place.
If you’re ready to modernize your PKI and CLM strategies, AppViewX offers the most advanced certificate lifecycle management and private PKI platform. Reach out to an AppViewX expert today to see how we can help you build crypto-agility and future-proof your security.
