Your security is our mission
Since the turn of the millennium, essendi it GmbH has established itself as a key player in the IT security industry. In 2015, we set ourselves the goal of continuously improving the operational security and operational availability of our customers by providing innovative certificate management solutions. After all, certificates are important and everywhere in digital communication. This realization, and the awareness / understanding that someone has to “take care of it”, was the cornerstone of essendi xc’s success story.
essendi xc- the first holistic certificate management solution made in Europe
The development of essendi xc
The development of essendi xc originally arose from a customer project in 2014/2015. After intensive collaboration and the search for existing solutions, we realized that there was no comprehensive approach that took a holistic view of certificates considering logistics and handling across the group. There were only stand-alone applications from various manufacturer CAs on the market, but these did not meet our customers’ expectations. We therefore decided to develop our own solution.
Worth knowing: At that time, a Google search for “certificate management” or “certificate management” yielded no results. Today ( June 2024) there are 32,400.
The year 2016 marked another milestone for our certificate management tool, as we were able to successfully register components of it for a patent.
The origin of the name: essendi xc certificate management
The name essendi xc stands for “extended certificate management” and underlines our vision of a comprehensive, expandable enterprise solution for digital certificate management.
Further milestones and future plans
2017: Legislative changes and product launch
On July 29, 2017, the revised German Digital Signature Act (SigG) came into force. It regulates the use of digital signatures based on certificates more strictly. The eIDAS Regulation had already harmonized the regulations for electronic signatures and identities across the EU in the previous year. These legal changes have significantly increased the importance of efficient certificate management.
In October 2017, we presented our certificate management tool essendi xc for the first time at the IT security expo it-sa in Nuremberg. The solution aroused great interest among professional visitors, underlining the urgency and market importance of our tool.
In addition, we began developing a range of comprehensive automation solutions to transport certificates to the target systems, activate them and thus make the work of security administrators even easier. Over the years, scp was joined by ACME, SCEP and many others. You can find a list of the current methods at https://xc.essendi.de/essendi-xc under the heading Enrollment.
2018: Market dynamics - reactions to new / increased security requirements
In 2018, Apple announced that they would only accept certificates with a maximum term of one year, instead of the previous three years. This change was a direct response to the increasing security requirements in the digital world. This decision caused great excitement in the market at the time. Not so for our customers. Because adjusting the certificate expiry dates and renewing certificates is simple and convenient and can be done with just a few clicks.
Almost at the same time, another pioneering initiative began: the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is committed to the development of industry standards, announced a contest to identify algorithms that are considered post-quantum secure according to current knowledge. This international competition attracts renowned universities and research institutes and is still ongoing (as of June 2020). Four winning algorithms were selected from 96 submissions. These are intended to replace existing encryption methods such as RSA or Diffie-Hellman in the future, as conventional asymmetric methods could be compromised quickly by quantum computers.
2020: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
The pandemic has accelerated digitalization in many areas and led to a significant increase in remote working. As a result, companies needed more digital certificates to ensure the security of their communication channels. The surge in demand for essendi xc highlighted the scalability and reliability of our solution under extreme conditions.
2021: Introduction of the cloud-first variant & internationalization
To allow our customers to use our software even more flexibly, we have developed a cloud-first version of essendi xc. With this version, companies can benefit from the advantages of our certificate management quickly and without extensive on-site installations.
As part of our internationalization strategy, we founded “essendi it AG” in Switzerland in February 2022. This enables us to provide customers and partners in the Swiss market with targeted support in the form of professional and secure certificate management solutions that are precisely tailored to their needs.
In March 2023, essendi it GmbH as a manufacturer received ISO 27001 certification, which confirms our continuous commitment to quality and security in our development processes.
Shortly after Google announced its intention to reduce the validity period of SSL/TLS certificates from one year to 90 days – a change that could quadruple the workload and complexity of managing digital identities and certificates – essendi it AG Switzerland launched a research project with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) at the end of 2023.
The aim is to investigate the impact of post-quantum cryptography on certificate management solutions and to develop recommendations for action. It addresses questions such as:
- What new requirements will arise from the use of new encryption algorithms?
- And how must a certificate management tool evolve in order to be able to offer convenient, fast and secure solutions in the future?
- How will encryption processes change in the future?
- What will digital certificates look like in the future?
- What new requirements will arise from the use of new encryption algorithms?
- And how must a certificate management tool evolve in order to be able to offer convenient, fast and secure solutions in the future?
What the future has in store
essendi it is a driver of innovation in the field of post-quantum cryptography (PQC). We plan to further expand this leading position in order to prepare our customers for future developments already today. Our aim is to prepare them in the best possible way and make them capable of acting.
New functions such as the CT Log Monitor, a download portal and interfaces to established automation tools such as Ansible and process management tools such as Service Now have already expanded the functional scope of our certificate management tool essendi xc. In 2022, essendi cd, a comprehensive scanning solution that detects digital certificates in data centers, was added to our product family.
We are also continuing to work on making essendi xc more barrier-free and sustainable to ensure the best possible access for all users.
Curious to find out more?
Would you like to find out more or experience essendi xc in a free live demo?
IT security is more than just a job for us: it is our passion. We apply the high standards that we originally defined for
demanding customers in the banking and insurance sector across all industries. Our long-standing membership of the Alliance for
Cyber Security and TeleTrusT underlines our ongoing commitment to security and trust.
