You can easily provision, manage, and deploy digital certificates by using Azure Key Vault. The certificates can be public and private Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates signed by a certificate authority (CA), or a self-signed certificate. Key Vault can also request and renew certificates through partnerships with CAs, providing a robust solution for certificate lifecycle management. In this tutorial, you'll update a certificate's validity period, auto-rotation frequency, and CA attributes.
The tutorial shows you how to:
Manage a certificate by using the Azure portal.
Add a CA provider account.
Update the certificate's validity period.
Update the certificate's auto-rotation frequency.
Update the certificate's attributes by using Azure PowerShell.
Before you begin, read Key Vault basic concepts.
If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Create a key vault using one of these three methods:
Create a key vault using the Azure portal
Create a key vault using the Azure CLI
Create a key vault using Azure PowerShell
Create a certificate in Key Vault
Create a certificate or import a certificate into the key vault (see Steps to create a certificate in Key Vault. In this case, you'll work on a certificate called ExampleCertificate.
Update certificate lifecycle attributes
In Azure Key Vault, you can update a certificate's lifecycle attributes both at the time of certificate creation or after.
A certificate created with a CA that's partnered with Key Vault.
A certificate with a CA that isn't partnered with Key Vault.
The following CAs are currently partnered providers with Key Vault:
DigiCert: Key Vault offers OV or EV TLS/SSL certificates.
GlobalSign: Key Vault offers OV or EV TLS/SSL certificates.
Key Vault auto-rotates certificates through established partnerships with CAs. Because Key Vault automatically requests and renews certificates through the partnership, auto-rotation capability isn't applicable for certificates created with CAs that aren't partnered with Key Vault.
Note
An account admin for a CA provider creates credentials that Key Vault uses to create, renew, and use TLS/SSL certificates.
Update certificate lifecycle attributes at the time of creation
On the Key Vault properties pages, select Certificates.
Select Generate/Import.
On the Create a certificate screen, update the following values:
Validity Period: Enter the value (in months). Creating short-lived certificates is a recommended security practice. By default, the validity value of a newly created certificate is 12 months.
Lifetime Action Type: Select the certificate's auto-renewal and alerting action and then update percentage lifetime or Number of days before expiry. By default, a certificate's auto-renewal is set at 80 percent of its lifetime. From the drop-down menu, select one of the following options.
Selecting this option will not auto-rotate but will only alert the contacts.
You can learn about setting up Email contact here
Select Create.
Update lifecycle attributes of a stored certificate
Select the key vault.
On the Key Vault properties pages, select Certificates.
Select the certificate you want to update. In this case, you'll work on a certificate called ExampleCertificate.
Select Issuance Policy from the top menu bar.
On the Issuance Policy screen, update the following values:
Validity Period: Update the value (in months).
Lifetime Action Type: Select the certificate's auto-renewal and alerting action and then update the percentage lifetime or Number of days before expiry.
Select Save.
Important
Changing the Lifetime Action Type for a certificate will record modifications for the existing certificates immediately.
To modify the renewal policy for a list of certificates, enter File.csv containingVaultName,CertName as in the following example: vault1,Cert1 vault2,Cert2
$file = Import-CSV C:\Users\myfolder\ReadCSVUsingPowershell\File.csv foreach($line in $file){Set-AzureKeyVaultCertificatePolicy -VaultName $vaultName -Name $certificateName -RenewAtNumberOfDaysBeforeExpiry [276 or appropriate calculated value]}
To learn more about the parameters, see az keyvault certificate.
Clean up resources
Other Key Vault tutorials build upon this tutorial. If you plan to work with these tutorials, you might want to leave these existing resources in place.When you no longer need them, delete the resource group, which deletes the key vault and related resources.
To delete the resource group by using the portal:
Enter the name of your resource group in the Search box at the top of the portal. When the resource group used in this quickstart appears in the search results, select it.
Select Delete resource group.
In the TYPE THE RESOURCE GROUP NAME: box, type the name of the resource group and then select Delete.
Next steps
In this tutorial, you updated a certificate's lifecycle attributes. To learn more about Key Vault and how to integrate it with your applications, continue on to the following articles:
Read more about Managing certificate creation in Azure Key Vault.
EZCA can automatically create and rotate your certificates in your key vault, but first there are some things you will need to do. Create your EZCA CA don't worry if you want to use your existing ADCS CA, you can connect your ADCS CA to EZCA and modernize it with all the cloud native connections EZCA offers.
On the Vaults page, click the name of the vault to open its details page. Under List scope, select a compartment that contains the key that you want to update. Under Resources, click Master Encryption Key. ) and then select Rotate key.
To change the automatic renewal setting for your App Service certificate at any time, on the App Service Certificates page, select the certificate.On the left menu, select Auto Renew Settings.Select On or Off, and select Save.
Follow these steps to enable automated AAD Certificate rotation: Add your application ID when creating your first certificate. Enable auto-rotation. Create your certificate.
Due to the nature of the AES-256-GCM encryption used, keys should be rotated before approximately 232 encryptions have been performed, following the guidelines of NIST publication 800-38D. As of Vault 1.7, Vault will automatically rotate the backend encryption key prior to reaching 232 encryption operations by default.
To rotate your storage account access keys with Azure CLI: Update the connection strings in your application code to reference the secondary access key for the storage account. Update the connection strings in your code to reference the new primary access key. Regenerate the secondary access key in the same manner.
Automatic key rotation at a defined period, such as every 90 days, increases security with minimal administrative complexity. You should also manually rotate a key if you suspect that it has been compromised, or when security guidelines require you to migrate an application to a stronger key algorithm.
Automated cryptographic key rotation in Key Vault allows users to configure Key Vault to automatically generate a new key version at a specified frequency. To configure rotation you can use key rotation policy, which can be defined on each individual key.
You can set a rotation policy to configure rotation for each individual key and optionally rotate keys on demand. Our recommendation is to rotate encryption keys at least every two years to meet cryptographic best practices.
Rotating an IAM access key simply means that you have to delete the access key of an IAM user and then create another access key. You will then use this new access key to replace the old access key that you are using on your AWS CLI, AWS SDK or from anywhere.
Certbot is a free, open-source tool that automates Let's Encrypt certificate handling, including obtaining and renewing them every 90 days. Once certbot is operating on a system, it sets a systemd timer to automatically renew certificates, ensuring continual security for dependent websites and services.
Set up the auto-renewal with “Lifetime Action Type”.
Then click “Create” to order the certificate. It will show up as “In progress” in the Key Vault and after 2-3 minutes should have the status “Completed”
Go to you Web App or Function and select “TLS/SSL settings”. The click on the “Private Key Certificates (.
If you're using a Domain Validation (DV) certificate with the primary domain for your account, and you've set the certificate to auto-renew, no further action is needed on your part. Renewing your SSL certificate is completely automated.
To rotate your storage account access keys with Azure CLI: Update the connection strings in your application code to reference the secondary access key for the storage account. Update the connection strings in your code to reference the new primary access key. Regenerate the secondary access key in the same manner.
How do I rotate secrets or encryption keys? To rotate secrets, just call the same command you used originally to enable disk encryption, specifying a different Key Vault. To rotate the key encryption key, call the same command you used originally to enable disk encryption, specifying the new key encryption.
To rotate a key with zero downtime, you'll need to create and deploy a new key before revoking the old one. If possible, monitor logs to ensure that the new key is being used after it has been deployed. Once the new key is being used by your application, you can revoke the old key.
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