How Certificate Automation Secures Transport and Logistics Organizations in the 47-Day SSL Era
Automation is essential for transport and logistics organizations to prevent outages and secure operations as SSL certificates shrink to 47-day lifecycles.
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Transport and logistics (T&L) organizations depend on uninterrupted systems for fleets, cargo, and passengers. Like other industries, they rely on SSL/TLS certificates to establish digital trust by securing communications through encryption and authentication. These certificates are crucial for protecting customers, passengers, and cargo, and for maintaining seamless operations across today's busy ports and airlines.
When these systems are interrupted, the consequences can be severe: Sensitive information becomes even more vulnerable. If this is accessed, organizations could face eroding consumer trust along with considerable compliance challenges. Another risk? Major delays that ripple across the entire global supply chain.
Cyberattacks are rising across airlines, ports, and supply chain networks. Threat actors increasingly view transport and logistics as prime targets, exploiting even minor vulnerabilities to cause data leaks and major disruptions in airline operations, freight tracking, and more.
While there is no single strategy or solution for combating these attacks, digital certificate management has a critical role to play. This role will only grow as certificate validity periods shrink. The next big milestone: 47-day certificate lifespans, which are set to become the new standard in 2029.
Escalating cyber threats in transport & logistics
Cybercriminals cause devastation across many sectors, but their impact in the logistics space is especially alarming. They increasingly target critical infrastructure, using social engineering and legitimate administrative tools to infiltrate systems. Once inside, they can compromise everything from transit schedules to shipments.
These attacks can disrupt the supply chain, bringing critical operations to a halt. The ripple effects can be felt across the entire economy and throughout vulnerable communities, leading to far-reaching effects, including shortages, delays, and price increases.
These issues become far more likely when digital certificates, like SSL/TLS certificates, are allowed to expire. Outages from expired certificates create openings for hackers and can spark devastating consequences, with a single outage costing up to $9,000 per minute, or between $500,000 and $5 million total.
Example of a high-profile attack on a logistics system
This recent example reveals the extensive damage that threat actors can cause when critical digital safeguards, including but not limited to digital certificates, are not properly managed.
Scattered Spider
Attacker group Scattered Spider (UNC3944) has carried out campaigns targeting airlines and other transport operations, relying heavily on social engineering and identity compromise to infiltrate systems. This group poses significant risk to T&L operations. According to Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), their tactics follow a ‘living-off-the-land (LoTL)’ approach, which leverages existing administrative tools and manipulated trust. This method can bypass many traditional security controls that organizations have long relied on.
This attack highlights a key vulnerability in many organizations: the human element. Systems that depend on manual processes, including manual certificate management, are more prone to mistakes and social engineering exploits. Without automation, even well-intentioned employees can inadvertently create openings for threat actors.
Why digital certificates matter during attacks
It takes a comprehensive security strategy to prevent and mitigate logistics-focused attacks. Digital certificates are a key component, delivering both encryption and authentication. Encryption helps protect sensitive information from interception, while authentication verifies that access is limited to trusted and authorized parties.
When SSL certificates expire or are mismanaged, recovery becomes more difficult. Certificate outages reduce resilience during high-pressure incidents and increase the risk of further compromise. Certificates therefore provide essential protection and help maintain continuity during incidents.
Automated certificate lifecycle management (CLM) helps to close common gaps and ensures certificates don’t become the weak link attackers exploit. By renewing and deploying certificates without human error, automated management prevents expired digital certificates from becoming the weakest points. This strengthens overall defenses and helps organizations maintain continuity if incidents do occur.
Automated certificate management solutions, like Sectigo Certificate Manager, provide the visibility and control needed to reduce security gaps and limit potential attacker movement within critical networks. These systems streamline every stage of the SSL lifecycle—from certificate issuance and deployment to renewal and beyond. They also support identity management, helping organizations advance toward zero-trust security models in which every interaction is verified.
What certificate management challenges do T&L operations face?
Transport and logistics organizations face many digital security challenges above and beyond the constant risk of cyberattack. These operations must maintain constant uptime to properly serve consumers and to avoid supply chain issues and bottlenecks. Their networks are inherently complex and increasingly interspersed, adding extra challenges to already complicated security initiatives.
While digital certificates provide a baseline of protection, these can easily fall short, especially for organizations that continue to rely on outdated manual management solutions.
Common challenges include:
High certificate volume across global networks
As operations expand and certificate validity periods shrink, organizations face growing certificate volume alongside an increasing rate of renewal. These challenges take place within vast networks that encompass numerous warehouses, carriers, and digital systems. With each extra channel or IoT device comes the need for expanded protection and the need to properly deploy and renew digital certificates in a timely manner.
Tracking expirations is already a challenge, and it will intensify as lifespans shrink. Certificate lifecycles will drop to 200 days in March 2026, 100 days in March 2027, and just 47 days by 2029. Without automation, keeping pace with this cycle will be nearly impossible.
Scalability strains on growing infrastructure
High certificate volumes are sparked, in part, by rapid digital scaling, with more devices, platforms, and integrations continually added. T&L organizations that opt for manual certificate management may struggle to scale their digital footprint because they encounter stubborn bottlenecks, or when they do attempt to scale up, they may suffer higher amounts of costly outages.
Without an automated CLM solution, already limited resources may grow strained, leaving organizations unable to fully take advantage of growth opportunities.
Decentralized and complex environments
Sprawling T&L operations involve vast digital ecosystems that encompass a myriad of servers, platforms, and data centers. These environments may feature dramatically different security policies, which can be difficult to maintain.
Add differing certificate authorities or renewal strategies to the mix, and blind spots become much more likely. This lack of centralized visibility can leave organizations vulnerable to misconfigurations and other issues that may lead to unacceptable outages.
Budget pressures and competing priorities
The overhead attached to manual certificate management can be considerable; lengthy certificate deployment, renewal, and revocation processes require hands-on IT resources and may prevent team members from addressing other critical concerns. Lapses can prove even more costly, however, with downtime potentially prompting millions in losses.
In a sector defined by tight margins, there is little room for waste or errors that lead to outages. With competing priorities, certificate management often takes a backseat to other security concerns, compounding existing challenges and weakening the overall security posture of T&L organizations.
Leadership buy-in and awareness gaps
Leaders recognize the importance of digital certificates but may struggle to see the urgency of adopting automation. As certificate lifecycles shorten and threats increase, manual management quickly becomes unsustainable.
Some executives also underestimate the financial impact of downtime or the long-term labor associated with manual certificate management. Their buy-in is critical to implementing automated CLM solutions, especially in the context of upcoming concerns surrounding crypto agility and the quantum threat.
Why are 47-day certificates a breaking point?
Shorter certificate lifespans, aimed at addressing future threats including quantum computing, mark one of the most significant changes in digital trust management in decades. For transport and logistics organizations already dealing with high volumes, complex networks, and limited resources, this shift will only magnify existing challenges.
Organizations that are just barely managing under 398-day validity periods will be severely tested as the window closes to 47 days by 2029. Manual strategies will no longer be a viable option and could ultimately prove a huge liability; the sheer volume of certificates and frequency of renewals will make it nearly impossible to keep up with slow manual processes, thereby making outages more likely for those who fail to adopt automated certificate lifecycle management.
From fleet telematics to cargo tracking platforms and even booking engines, many critical systems could be disabled if certificates are not properly renewed. Ensuing losses could be magnified if these failures occur during peak logistics seasons. After all, attackers have been known to strike during times of high demand.
Shorter lifespans may provide the push needed to take steps towards achieving truly robust cybersecurity in a rapidly changing digital ecosystem. With automated solutions in place, 47-day validity periods will no longer feel like a liability, but rather, will become a security advantage.
How automation strengthens transport & logistics organization security
Automated certificate management strengthens overall T&L security by addressing both present inefficiencies and anticipated challenges. This is a proactive solution designed to keep pace with evolving security requirements.
With certificates centrally managed and automatically discovered, deployed, and renewed, organizations can remain confident that critical technologies will remain online. Meanwhile, reporting tools, like those available within the SCM platform, will strengthen compliance, producing an audit trail that will satisfy regulators and insurers. In the long run, this supports zero-trust security strategies.
Secure your transport and logistics operations with Sectigo
As certificate lifespans shrink, T&L leaders must adopt a proactive approach to digital certificate management, complete with automation. This is only the first step, however. Leaders must also be mindful of looming quantum threats, which requires advanced crypto agility within organizations. Automated CLM offers one of the most accessible steps towards achieving crypto agility, as this makes it easier to update cryptographic standards without disrupting crucial operations.
Sectigo helps organizations transition to automated certificate management with a platform built for complex, large-scale environments. Sectigo Certificate Manager (SCM) provides the visibility and control needed to manage certificates across today’s vast transport and logistics networks. SCM adapts to existing infrastructures with broad integration options and CA-agnostic capabilities.
Learn more about T&L use cases or take the next step by scheduling a demo.