Why Certificate Management?
essendi xc - central hub for all certificate management processes
Airport hubs are digital and logistical masterpieces. Like magic the processes seem to interlock, run automatically and in the end baggage, goods and passengers land worldwide where they are expected.
essendi xc works in a very similar way: as the central hub of certificate management, it records all certificate processes and controls them in a bundled manner. Regardless of whether they were predefined in the hub or manually triggered via the self-service portal. The xc dashboard and the overview pages provide a comprehensive and central overview of the current status quo of the certificate inventory and the ongoing processes. For this purpose, all processes are monitored and controlled by xc. This allows certificates to be automatically applied for, renewed, revoked and even distributed to the target system.
Unfortunately, we cannot explain to you how the processes run at the airport. However, we are happy to offer you a closer look at certificate management and its impact on different management areas in companies.
Among other things, certificates are needed for unique identification in the digital space. Here they are comparable to an identity document. Like identity documents, certificates contain information that is necessary for verification, e.g.
- the name of the issuer
- the name of the owner
- the public key of the owner
- a validity period or expiry date (validity)
In addition to unique authentication, certificates ensure the following properties during data transmission:
- Integrity: The data was not changed during transmission.
- Secrecy: The data was not read by third parties during transmission.
- Verifiability: The data was verifiably sent from a specific sender to a specific recipient.
Certificates therefore secure the digital data flow and guarantee the unique identification of the communicating systems. They thus play a key role in IT security. In order to maintain smooth operations and at the same time minimise business risks, it is important to pay attention to efficient processes. Therefore, careful certificate management is important. Certificate management creates transparency about the certificates in use by the company through documentation:
- What types of certificates are used where in the company?
- What is their function (encryption, signature, ...)?
- Who ordered them them from which certification authority (CA)?
- How long are they valid?
Modern certificate management not only serves to administer existing certificates, but also includes comprehensive lifecycle management. This includes certificate renewal, installation in target systems and the withdrawal (revocation) of compromised or invalid certificates.
Certificate management affects the following management areas in the company:
- IT Security Management
- Compliance / Security
- Risk Management
- IT Process Management
- Certificate Assets

IT-Security
Certificate management obviously plays a role in your company's IT security strategy and IT security management. The more certificates a company has, the more relevant is a conscientious management.
Certificate management combines all components that are involved in the certificate area:
- Certification Authorities (CAs)
- External and internal public key infrastructures (PKIs)
- Hardware security modules (HSMs)
- Target components inside and outside the network, e.g.
- User management systems
- Central process management systems
- Central ticket systems (issue tracking systems)
- E-mail signatures (electronic signatures)

Compliance / Security
In the IT security environment, the term compliance stands for adherence to defined standards. Therefore, certain specifications must be adhered to in most companies. In addition to storage locations and the composition of file names, the length and composition of passwords as well as their change frequency are familiar to all employees.
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Risk management / System failure
An invalid certificate can paralyse a business, as in the worst case the entire digital communication - from email traffic to production facilities - is interrupted.
In rare cases, the certification authority has to be changed at short notice. Even then, certificate failures can occur if certificates of the old CA are no longer valid and those of the new CA are not yet installed or activated. Certificate management should therefore also be considered in risk management.

Process Management
IT process management consists of a multitude of different internal and external components. It connects the various IT infrastructures that interact in your company:
Internal components | External components |
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Certificate Assets
Certificates are the foundation of all secure digital communication. As more and more devices and applications in every company communicate with each other in a secure manner, the number of certificates required for this purpose is also increasing. At the same time, however, their validity period is constantly decreasing for security reasons. In order to avoid failures, comprehensive certificate inventory management with precise documentation is necessary.
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