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[CLM]

Certificate Lifecycle Management

IDENT1TY automates certificate lifecycle management across your entire PKI estate : discovery, renewal, and revocation of every SSL/TLS certificate and machine identity to eliminate outages and compliance gaps.

As a vendor-neutral integrator, we deploy and run the right CLM solution inside your environment.

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certificate lifecycle management

The certificate lifecycle: from issuance to revocation

Discovery & inventory

Certificate discovery scans your full estate to build a centralized inventory, eliminating unknown and orphaned certificates.

Issuance

A certificate signing request (CSR) is submitted to a certificate authority (CA), which issues the X.509 certificate.

Deployment

The certificate is installed on the target endpoint, application, or load balancer.

Monitoring & alerting

Proactive alerts (90 / 30 / 7 days before expiry) prevent outages from forgotten certificates.

Renewal

Automated certificate management via the ACME protocol renews certificates with no manual steps.

Revocation

Compromised or retired certificates are revoked and published (CRL / OCSP) so they can no longer be trusted.

Why choose a CLM integrator over a single vendor

Most CLM vendors sell you their product.

As a vendor-neutral integrator, IDENT1TY helps you select the right approach for your environment, public CA, private PKI, or hybrid, and deploys it end to end, then runs it as a managed service.

 

That means you get:

– An objective assessment of your certificate estate and PKI maturity, not a sales pitch for one platform.
– End-to-end integration into your existing CAs, HSMs, and DevOps / CI-CD pipelines (ACME, SCEP, EST).
– Ongoing governance: machine identity ownership, renewal policies, and audit-ready PKI compliance (ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, eIDAS).

– A pure vendor optimizes for its license. An integrator optimizes for your uptime and your audit.

Why most CLM projects fail?

Uninventoried certificates

Silent expirations, service interruptions, security breaches

Non-scalable manual processes

Impossible to manage at scale, frequent errors, deadlines missed

Fragmented visibility

Impossible to manage risks without a centralized view of the lifecycle

Never again a service outage from a forgotten certificate

Certificate-related incidents cost an average of 15 hours of downtime.
IDENT1TY automates every step of the lifecycle.

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Automatic inventory of all your certificates

Passive and active discovery of your entire PKI estate — on-premise, cloud or multi-cloud. No orphaned certificate.

Automated renewal without manual intervention

Renewal workflows triggered according to your business rules. Your teams only receive exceptions.

Multi-level proactive alerts

Notifications at 90, 30 and 7 days with configurable escalation. Your CISO no longer discovers expiries after the outage.

Continuously documented PKI compliance

ISO 27001, PCI-DSS and eIDAS compliance reports generated automatically for every audit or regulatory request.

What we do today

We help organizations regain control of all their digital certificates in order to reduce the risks of expiry and non-compliance.

Discovery · Inventory · Prioritization
01
Automated discovery
  • Automated discovery of certificates present on servers, applications, network equipment, cloud environments and internal platforms
  • Creation of a centralized inventory including owner, usage, issuing authority and expiry date
02
Risk identification and prioritization
  • Identification of unknown, expired, misconfigured, self-signed certificates or those non-compliant with internal policies
  • Prioritization of the risks tied to critical, exposed certificates or those used by sensitive services

We support our clients in automating certificate renewal in order to reduce manual operations and service interruptions.

ACME · Automation · Zero expiry
01
End-to-end automated processes
  • Implementation of automated processes for certificate request, validation, issuance, renewal and revocation
  • Reduction of the risks tied to unexpected expiries, human error or operational dependencies
02
Workflows and industrialization
  • Definition of approval workflows tailored to criticality levels, application owners and business constraints
  • Industrialization of the certificate lifecycle to ensure smooth, traceable and secure management

We help organizations design, secure, modernize and operate their PKI infrastructures, whether internal or hybrid.

PKI · CA · HSM · Governance
01
PKI architecture analysis and design
  • Analysis of the existing PKI architecture, certificate authorities, issuance policies and associated use cases
  • Design or improvement of robust, resilient PKI architectures aligned with business and security needs
02
Securing and operations
  • Securing of the certificate authorities, keys, certificate templates and administration processes
  • Support for the operation, documentation and operational governance of the PKI infrastructure

We enable enterprises to better control the machine identities used by applications, services, APIs, workloads and cloud environments.

Machine identity · DevOps · Cloud · IoT
01
Mapping and governance
  • Mapping of machine identities and the certificates associated with the enterprise's critical services
  • Definition of governance rules: ownership, validity period, issuance policies, revocation and renewal
02
Risk reduction and alignment
  • Reduction of the risks tied to unmanaged certificates, orphan machine identities or undocumented usage
  • Alignment of machine identity governance with IAM, PAM, DevOps, cloud and application security practices

We integrate certificate and machine identity management into DevOps chains to secure deployments without slowing teams down.

CI/CD · Pipelines · Containers · API
01
Pipeline integration and automation
  • Integration of CLM/PKI solutions into CI/CD pipelines, DevOps platforms, secrets-management tools and cloud environments
  • Automation of certificate issuance and renewal for applications, APIs, microservices and containers
02
Controls and reduced friction
  • Implementation of security controls embedded in the build, deployment and production-release processes
  • Reduction of friction between security, infrastructure and development through standardized, automated workflows

We help our clients demonstrate control of their certificates, machine identities and PKI infrastructure.

Audit · PCI-DSS · ISO 27001 · Reporting
01
Reports and dashboards
  • Production of reports on certificate status, expiries, anomalies, issuing authorities and compliance gaps
  • Implementation of management dashboards to track risks, renewals and remediation actions
02
Regulatory alignment and audit evidence
  • Alignment of CLM/PKI practices with internal policies, regulatory requirements and security standards
  • Preparation of audit evidence relating to the management of certificates, keys, certificate authorities and machine identities
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Use cases

CLMInsurance — national mutual

Industrialization of the certificate lifecycle

Automated discovery, ACME automation and the end of expiry incidents across a fleet of 5,000 certificates.

8 months
4,000 employees · 5,000 certificates
CLM · CMDB · SIEM · ACME
Context & challenges

The insurer had suffered several major production incidents linked to undetected certificate expiries, one of which had caused a partial outage of the member portal for several hours.

The analysis had highlighted the lack of a reliable inventory, with certificates issued by different teams, with no governance and no identified owner.

Pain points
No consolidated view of certificates, management by incident only
Coexistence of several internal and public authorities with no harmonized policy
Nearly 25% of certificates with no identified owner in the CMDB
Progressive reduction of validity periods making manual processes untenable
The IDENT1TY approach
01Deployment of an automated discovery scanner across the entire infrastructure to build the complete inventory
02Assignment of a technical owner to each certificate and update of the CMDB
03Implementation of the ACME protocol to automate renewals without manual intervention
04Creation of dashboards with proactive alerts at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry
05Training of the ops teams and documentation of the CLM governance processes
Results achieved
Zero undetected expiry incident since the solution went live
100% of certificates with an identified owner and an associated renewal policy
70% of the time spent on manual certificate management eliminated thanks to ACME automation
Complete visibility over the entire fleet from a centralized dashboard
Documented, auditable process compliant with PCI-DSS and ISO 27001 requirements
0
Expiry incident since go-live
− 70%
Manual management time
100%
Certificates with identified owner

Another use case, another challenge.

PKIIndustry — connected devices

Sovereign PKI for a French connected-device manufacturer

Design and operation of a public key infrastructure dedicated to 200,000 devices over ten years.

10 months + operations
200,000+ devices deployed
PKI · HSM · EST · SCEP · IEC 62443
Context & challenges

A manufacturer selling long-lifespan connected equipment, whose initial PKI could no longer support its growth nor the IEC 62443 compliance requirements.

The project aimed to rebuild a dedicated, sovereign PKI capable of serving the existing fleet and absorbing the growth forecast over ten years.

Pain points
Scaling to several million certificates issued per year with no degradation in enrollment times
Designing a CA hierarchy whose roadmap spans ten years with planned rotations
Integrating initial provisioning into the manufacturing process without slowing the lines
Documenting and auditing end-to-end cryptographic governance, IEC 62443
The IDENT1TY approach
01Design of a 3-tier PKI hierarchy with an offline root CA on a dedicated physical HSM
02Integration of the EST and SCEP protocols into the manufacturing lines for automatic enrollment at production
03Architecture sized to absorb several million issuances per year with no degradation in lead times
04Complete documentation of the Certificate Policy and CPS in line with IEC 62443 requirements
05Implementation of operations with intermediate CA rotation procedures planned over 10 years
Results achieved
200,000+ devices under a dedicated PKI — a fleet controlled end to end from the first day of production
Enrollment integrated into the manufacturing lines, with zero manual operation per device
Governance roadmap documented over 10 years, with CA rotations planned and tested
IEC 62443 compliance achieved, unlocking product certification for European industrial markets
Scalable architecture validated to absorb the forecast growth without a major overhaul
200k +
Devices under dedicated PKI
10 yrs
Governance roadmap documented
IEC 62443
Compliance achieved

Our numbers talk for us

28

Years of experience

+100

Active Certifications

76

Projects deployed in 2025

17

Countries covered

+40

IAM/PAM/IGA certified experts

How Ident1ty works on your CLM project

Solution integrator

We deploy your CLM solution from A to Z.

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Continuous Support & Managed Services

We maintain and optimize your CLM environment.

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Success Plan

A dedicated CSM to support you.

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Our technology partners
FAQ

Certificate Lifecycle Management FAQ

Straight answers on how certificate lifecycle management works, from issuance to revocation.

If your teams still track certificates by hand, these are the questions worth asking before the next outage.

What is certificate lifecycle management?
It is the end to end management of digital certificates across an organization's entire PKI estate. It covers issuance, deployment, monitoring, renewal, and revocation, usually automated through a CLM platform.
What is the difference between certificate management and PKI?
PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) is the underlying framework of certificate authorities, keys, and trust. Certificate management is the operational layer that handles the certificates issued by that PKI throughout their lifecycle.
What is SSL/TLS certificate management?
It is the practice of tracking and maintaining the SSL/TLS certificates that secure websites, APIs, and services, ensuring none expire unexpectedly and all stay compliant.
How does automated certificate renewal work?
The ACME protocol lets a CLM platform request, validate, and install renewed certificates automatically, with no manual intervention, before the old certificate expires.
What happens when a certificate expires?
Connections relying on it break. Services go down, browsers show security warnings, and integrations fail. Automated monitoring and renewal prevent these outages.
Why automate certificate lifecycle management?
Shrinking validity periods and exploding machine identity volumes make manual management unscalable. Automation eliminates outages, reduces effort, and keeps you audit ready.

Your CLM project deserves support from certified specialists.

Our consultants analyze your situation and guide you for free in 30 minutes.

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