Blog Post May 28, 2025

The hidden risk lurking in your infrastructure: mismanaged certificates

Mismanaged certificates in hybrid environments pose a critical but often invisible risk to enterprise operations. Expired internal PKI certificates can lead to costly outages, compliance failures, and long-term damage especially in regulated industries. As digital transformation accelerates certificate use, fragmented tools fail to keep pace. Automation and centralized internal PKI systems reduce risk, ensure operational continuity, and prepare organizations for evolving cyber threats.

1. Why digital certificates are a hidden risk

2. The growing challenge of managing internal certificates

3. Automation and internal PKI: a path to resilience

4. Building a secure future with Sectigo’s internal PKI

Why digital certificates are a hidden risk

For many enterprise leaders, digital certificates remain invisible until something goes wrong. But when certificates expire unexpectedly, the damage can be immediate and severe: system outages, customer-facing downtime, failed audits, and security vulnerabilities. The culprit? Mismanaged certificates buried deep in hybrid IT environments.

Internal PKI secures businesses from the inside out. Certificates issued internally are used for device authentication on VPN and Wi-Fi networks, ensuring only authorized devices can access your networks; email encryption and email signing, ensuring the sender’s identity and protecting from external senders; or IoT device security, establishing identity and integrity and enabling secure communications.

The growing challenge of managing internal certificates

Digital transformation has increased the volume and velocity of certificates issued within an enterprise. Certificates establish trust and secure communication across an enterprise. Yet many organizations continue to rely on fragmented tools, spreadsheets, or point solutions to manage these internal certificates leading to a lack of coordination and visibility.

The result is a ticking time bomb. According to industry data, certificate-related outages are responsible for millions of dollars in business losses annually. These outages can take down servers, disrupt business-critical services, and trigger a flood of customer service issues. Beyond financial cost, they also lead to compliance violations, breach investigations, and long-term brand damage. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and government, the consequences can be even more severe.

When certificate expiration leads to outages in systems supporting patient care, financial transactions, or national security, the fallout is not just reputational, it’s operational and legal. Security teams are increasingly tasked with preventing these risks, but without centralized tools and automation, they remain reactive rather than proactive.

Automation and internal PKI: a path to resilience

Addressing these enterprise-specific security measures requires automated Internal PKI: a centralized, policy-driven infrastructure that allows organizations to issue, manage, and automate certificates internally. By replacing siloed and manual processes with automation, Internal PKI dramatically reduces the risk of service disruptions and eliminates the operational blind spots that cause security failures. With complete visibility into the certificate landscape, security teams can proactively prevent expirations, revoke compromised certificates instantly, and ensure seamless certificate renewals.

For business leaders looking to reduce risk across the board, choosing the right Internal PKI is a foundational investment in operational resilience. The right platform and governance policies will eliminate a high-risk, high-cost vulnerability that has flown under the radar for too long. The time to act is before the next outage, not after.

Preparing for the future of security requires automation and visibility today. Sectigo’s Internal PKI enables agile architectures with centralized management, fast and automatic policy enforcement, and support for post-quantum algorithms as the landscape of digital threats evolve. It’s the flexible foundation organizations need to keep digital trust intact as compliance and computing changes.