Security Certificate Renewal Management

Context. An SSL encrypted client-server communication is necessary to maintain the security and privacy of the communication. For an SSL encryption to work, there should be a security certificate which has a certain expiry period. Periodic renewal of the certificate after its expiry is a waste of time and an effort on part of the company. Objectives. In this study, a new system has been developed and implemented, which sends a certificate during prior communication and does not wait for the certificate to expire. Automating the process to a certain extent was done to not compromise the security of the system and to speed up the process and reduce the downtime. Methods. Experiments have been conducted to test the new system and compare it to the old system. The experiments were conducted to analyze the packets and the downtime occurring from certificate renewal. Results. The results of the experiments show that there is a significant reduction in downtime. This was achieved due to the implementation of the new system and semi-automation Conclusions. The system has been implemented, and it greatly reduces the downtime occurring due to the expiry of the security certificates. Semi-Automation has been done to not hamper the security and make the system robust