Best Practices To Protect SSL/TLS Certificates and Keys (2024)

Introduction

Almost all companies rely on cryptographic keys anddigital certificatesto keep communications between devices secure and confidential. Digital certificates and keys solved the problem of communicating back and forth securely on the Internet.

SSL/TLS certificatesenable devices and systems to be uniquely identified and trusted. To keep digital communication safe, private communication tunnels are created using encryption that keeps digital communications safe across computer networks. Certificates and their associated keys control access to information in these private tunnels.

Hackers target certificates to utilize in their attacks because they know most companies have encryption tunnel blind spots. When attackers acquire access to certificates that have been stolen or faked, they obtain access to the globally trusted status provided by these digital assets, enabling them to gain access to private, encrypted tunnels through which they can monitor communications. Even with the help of these certificates, hackers can establish their encrypted tunnel for malicious activities.

Without the proper management of keys and digital certificates, Dangerous private tunnels carrying malicious traffic might be hidden among numerous tunnels carrying good traffic supporting daily operations.

Best Practices for Protecting SSL/TLS Certificates and Keys

• Identify and create SSL/TLS Certificates inventory

  You subject yourself to security threats ifyou don’t keep a strict inventory of your certificates, so start by keeping track of all the issued certificatesfrom your Certificate Authority (CA). Manually, Itcan be challenging to ensure that you’ve collected everything, from internal CAs to network devices. To build anaccurate inventory, Enterprises should automate a system that quickly scans the whole digital infrastructure toidentify all digital assets, including where they are installed, who owns them, and how they are utilized. This willhelp you identify all certificates that may influence the reliability and availability of your company’sinfrastructure.

• Monitor SSL/TLS Certificates

  Manual management of certificates becomes challenging as yournetworks evolve and the number of certificates increases. All of the certificates in your environment should becontinuously checked for availability, expiration, and key strength in real-time synchronization with CAs, SSLnetwork scans, and certificate store inventories.

• Automate certificate management

  Processes that rotate any or all keys and renewcertificates on a planned or as-needed basis are required by strong security procedures. With automation, you canupdate all affected certificates, private keys, and CA certificate chains fast. You may also respond quickly tomajor security events like a CA compromise or a zero-day vulnerability in a cryptographic algorithm or library byautomating the tasks. Automation helps prevent outages and saves time from manual tasks like certificate requests,issuance, provisioning, and renewal.

• Secure Private Keys

  When an attacker gets access to a private key, valuable data is leaked dueto the impersonation of an enterprise’s servers. To ensure maximum security, never leave private keys in your logs,especially your email and chat, whether for storage or transmission and use a central key escrow, such as anencrypted software vault or Hardware Security Module (HSM).

• Enforce Policies

  Your security posture should contain a well-defined policy that specifieswhich application settings are required and how certificates should be used. Machine identity security policies andpractices must be established to keep your machine identities safe. This helps manage all aspects of machineidentities, including issuance, use, configuration, ownership, management, security, and decommissioning.

• SSL/TLS Certificate Vulnerabilities

  Increased threat intelligence is needed to provide abaseline for identifying vulnerable keys and certificates, such as those with weak encryption algorithms or shortkey lengths. A baseline can help identify applications that are served by vulnerable keys and certificates andcertificates that are possibly compromised, unused, or expired and should be revoked or retired.

How can Encryption Consulting help?

Encryption Consulting provides a specialized Certificate Lifecycle management solutionCertSecure Manager. From discovery and inventory to issuance, deployment, renewal, revocation, and reporting. CertSecure provides an all-encompassing solution. Intelligent report generation, alerting, automation, automatic deployment onto servers, and certificate enrollment add layers of sophistication, making it a versatile and intelligent asset.