7 Ways to Prevent the Next Outage with Proper Enterprise Key and Certificate Management
It’s not exactly breaking news, but outages are expensive. A single expired TLS certificate can take down critical systems, lock customers out of digital services, and cause lasting reputational harm.
Gartner once famously predicted that through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault [source], and one of the most common reasons is mismanaged keys and certificates
For enterprises, the lesson is clear: digital trust depends on disciplined enterprise key and certificate management. Yet many organizations are still juggling spreadsheets, siloed systems, and manual processes that make outages almost inevitable
In this blog, we’ll explore:
- Why enterprise key management and enterprise certificate management matter
- Seven practical ways to reduce outage risk through better governance
- How post-quantum cryptography (PQC) complicates this picture, and what steps you can take now
Let’s dive in
1. Maintain Complete Visibility Across Keys and Certificates
The first step to avoiding downtime is knowing what you have on your hands. Many organizations underestimate the sprawl: encryption keys stored across cloud providers, on-premises HSMs, and internal applications; or certificates spread across hundreds of services
Without full visibility, keys expire unnoticed, and certificates aren’t renewed on time. That’s what led to Microsoft’s infamous Teams outage in 2020, traced back to an expired certificate [source]
Enterprise key and certificate management solutions centralize discovery, so security teams always have an up-to-date inventory. This serves two purposes: preventing embarrassing outages and reducing audit headaches when regulators ask for proof of compliance
2. Automate Renewal and Rotation Processes
Relying on people to track certificate expiration dates is a recipe for failure (or more accurately, disaster). Modern enterprise certificate management allows organizations to automate renewals, rotations, and even revocations
Automation is especially critical as certificate lifespans shrink. Web browsers have reduced TLS certificate validity from 3 years to 200 days and are progressively reducing the validity period to just 47 days by 2029 [source]. In this scenario, enterprises without automation will find themselves playing an endless game of catch-up
Automation also applies to key rotation. The National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] cybersecurity framework lists rotation as a best practice to reduce exposure in case of compromise. Automation keeps this process happening consistently, not only after an incident
3. Enforce Strong Access Controls
Outages aren’t always accidental. Sometimes, they’re malicious. Poorly controlled keys can be stolen, duplicated or misused by insiders, but enterprise key management helps by enforcing policies such as:
- Role-based access control (RBAC)
- Multi-factor authentication for key usage
- Quorum approval for sensitive cryptographic operations
- Centralized monitoring and anomaly detection
This governance ensures that no single administrator can abuse privileges or accidentally trigger outages through misconfiguration, and that intrusions can be detected when adversaries obtain valid keys or credentials
4. Integrate With DevOps and Cloud Workflows
In the age of continuous deployment, developers are frantically spinning up and tearing down cloud workloads. Using Configuration-as-Code, developers define how software is rolled out, and these deployments often happen automatically upon automated test cycles. Each of these workloads may need certificates and keys to authenticate access to microservices within the deployment, and if the security team isn’t tightly integrated, outages happen due to certificates that fail to propagate or environments that inherit outdated keys
Forward-thinking teams embed enterprise certificate management directly into CI/CD pipelines. That way, developers don’t need to manually request or configure certificates; they’re provisioned automatically
Integration with cloud-native tools (AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, Google Cloud KMS) prevents silos. As enterprises embrace hybrid and multi-cloud architecture, centralizing control becomes the only way to maintain consistency
5. Test Failover and Incident Response Plans
Even with strong enterprise key and certificate management, mistakes can happen. What separates resilient organizations from vulnerable ones is preparation
Banks and financial institutions are especially strict about failover testing, often requiring disaster recovery drills multiple times per year. Enterprise IT should apply the same rigor. If a certificate authority (CA) goes down or a key is revoked unexpectedly, teams should know exactly how to recover
In sports, they say that teams play how they practice, and that’s the case here. Without regular testing, the first time you discover gaps in your process might be during a production outage, which is the worst possible time
6. Plan for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)
Once quantum computers are powerful enough, they’ll be able to break today’s widely used encryption algorithms like RSA and ECC. That means every certificate and key in use today will become obsolete
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has already finalized post-quantum cryptography standards, but for enterprises, the challenge isn’t just swapping algorithms: it’s understanding where vulnerable keys are used and how to transition without disruption
This is where tools like Fortanix Key Insight (for discovery and assessment) and Fortanix Data Security Manager (DSM) (for crypto-agility and PQC transition) can help. By gaining visibility now, enterprises can avoid a future in which outages stem not from expired certificates, but from obsolete cryptography
7. Regularly Audit and Report on Key Usage
Finally, no security program is complete without measurement. Auditing not only satisfies compliance mandates (such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR and others) but also provides operational insights:
- Which keys are overprivileged?
- Which certificates are nearing expiration?
- Are keys being rotated as required?
By generating regular reports, security teams can catch issues before they lead to actual downtime. Just as importantly, audits help CISOs communicate their risk posture to the board, which is a growing priority as digital trust becomes business critical
*For more details, dive into Enterprise Key Management
The Bottom Line: Outages Are Preventable
Downtime caused by expired certificates or mismanaged keys is both costly and avoidable. Disciplined enterprise key and certificate management sets organizations up to maintain visibility, automate renewals, enforce controls, integrate with cloud workflows, test resilience, prepare for PQC, and audit effectively
The cost of inaction is high. Businesses lose $400 billion each year due to unanticipated IT failures or unplanned downtime [source]. And in banking, healthcare, and other highly regulated industries, reputational damage may be even greater
The good news? Fortanix helps enterprises simplify and modernize their approach by bringing crypto-agility, centralized control, and PQC readiness into a single platform. Explore how Fortanix can help by requesting a demo.
