As a consultant for Ivanti Service Manager we often encounter many different challenges our customers face. No two customers are the same in this regard. However, when it comes to Certificate Management all our customers come to us with the same problem. Their certs expire and they are left scrambling to get a new cert minted and applied and try to mitigate the loss of potential revenue and downtime. Well, at Dataseti we have just the solution for our customers!
Cert Management isn’t just about keeping track of your certs and when they are going to expire. It’s also about maintaining the certs, making sure they are still needed and are up to the security standards of the organization. We have designed a way for customer to have this level of visibility at an easily accessible level and automate part of the process along the way. Here’s how it works.
Using the CI object in ISM we first load all the certs into the appropriate Asset Type. Included is information about the cert, the name and what it’s tied to. The downstream affects it would have if it were to go down, when we want to be notified that it’s about to expire and when it actually will expire. Once that information is in ISM, we have a process that runs once a day to check and see when certs are about to expire. If they are, an Incident is created, and a Task is automatically assigned to the proper product owner to mint a new cert or retire the cert. The product owner takes the required steps with the cert and completes the Task. Information gathered from the Task such as when the next time this cert will expired are then moved back into the CI object where the process begins again. This way the customer knows when they need to take corrective action. Additionally, all changes are logged and audited so they can be reviewed. It’s a simple system but know that provides a lot of added value to your Ivanti Service Manager solution.
This process has been a big hit with our customers and we’re sure it will be with you as well!