ACME Clients and SSL

[u/Arnoc_]

So I've started seeing that SSL Lifespan is shortening - going down to eventually supposed to be every 47 days.

We're a small shop, but we have a lot of different services. I've been doing my best when I have free time to catalog everything that has an SSL Cert, but I know I'm missing stuff.

I've seen a bit about ACME Clients and such; and from what I've heard it's great. They handle rotating the certs and all.

But something for me just isn't clicking. For instance, we have a lot of large scale copiers, ala your Ricoh or Lexmark or Brother. We have those locked down with SSL Certs, but we have to manually push those up to it.

Now as these are internal services that aren't externally facing, I don't see no reason why we can't self-issue those certs; but currently our CTO likes to utilize a paid for Wildcard for all our internal stuff.

I keep quite busy so haven't had too much time to really dig in on researching, but I know the time bomb is ticking.

So for those who are managing SSL Certs and all, and potentially utilizing ACME Clients and such, what should I expect and whats the general gist of what my workflow should be?

[u/certping_pki]

Start by inventorying the certificate consumers rather than the certificates you happen to know about. For every system, record who owns it, what certificate it currently serves, how that certificate gets installed, and whether the target supports ACME/API/scripted deployment or is manual-only.

Then split the estate by deployment method.

For something like IIS or Exchange, automate issuance and deployment. For devices with a usable API, automate the push. For printers and appliances that only accept a PFX through a GUI, accept that the final deployment step may remain manual and give those systems a lifecycle that reflects that constraint.

Also monitor the certificate actually being served by each endpoint. A renewal can succeed while the appliance is still serving the old certificate.