Advantages that Digital Certificates centralization brings to organisations

The digital certificate has been consolidated as a key element for the digitization of companies. Its use has allowed greater accessibility and agility in procedures such as the electronic signature of documents or the authentication of electronic offices, favoring inter-organizational communications or public administrations, and significantly increasing the productivity related to these processes.

The delicate nature of the transactions we carry out with digital certificates, added to the large volume of certificates within organizations, demonstrates the need for solutions that offer secure custody of digital certificates. Centralization in the cloud has become established in response to this demand.

Among the multiple advantages that the centralization of Digital Certificates brings to organizations we find:

Most companies today, regardless of their size, have to manage multiple digital certificates. In order not to lose control over their use, it is essential not to install them on multiple workstations, as we would be endangering the integrity of the certificate, increasing the risk of fraud or theft in the event of a cyberattack and facing legal sanctions, in the event of signing with a certificate whose integrity has been compromised.

With the certificates’ centralization in a single platform in the cloud, we protect our certificates against improper or fraudulent use and possible attacks on workstations that lead to the loss of identities and stored information.

Centralization allows easier and more efficient management of digital certificates. Instead of having multiple certificates issued by different certificate authorities (CAs), a single, centralized CA can be used, simplifying administration and reducing system complexity.

Additionally, digital certificates centralized management allows you to control from a single point who and how all the certificates are used within the organization, blocking access to all who, for some reason, no longer should have access to the use of the certificates. 

Finally, centralization also greatly streamlines the management of the life cycle of the certificates, and allows us to quickly anticipate and manage their renewals and revocations, minimizing the risks due to unavailability of services and/or the impossibility of carrying out procedures with the Public Administrations.

By centralizing the digital certificates and their cryptographic keys in a secure and audited HSM device, the integrity and safe custody of the keys can be guaranteed since physical controls are established that prevent them from being copied or extracted from the device that holds them. For this, it is essential to use technologies accredited by the CCN or the European Commission, as Víntegris does in all its infrastructures.

A centralized environment makes it easy for certificates to be used from multiple devices and from anywhere, since it offers many more access tools than local environments. Among these tools, there are mainly web browsers, mobile applications, or desktop applications, although there are also integration interfaces so that companies or organizations can connect their applications and integrate the use of their certificates into their tools and processes.

By having a single centralized CA, trust can be improved in all those processes in which they intervene, which can increase the acceptance and adoption of digital signature technologies, which allow the generation of legally binding signatures, such as nebulaSIGN.

Centralizing digital certificates can help reduce costs associated with issuing and managing certificates. In addition, expired certificates are expensive: organizations can lose no less than €21.4 million due to non-compliance and €12.8 million in business continuity.

Centralization in the cloud allows you to reduce the risk of certificate expiration with the renewal notification functionality, controlling the life cycle of digital certificates much more efficiently and quickly.

With the qualified certificates, certain centralization SaaS platforms, such as nebulaCERT, can issue and sign documents with the same legal validity as the signature on paper.

nebulaCERT, Víntegris’ SaaS solution, allows organizations to create and manage Qualified Digital Certificates without having to manually install them on each device, guaranteeing the security and traceability of all operations in a completely transparent manner for the end user.

The nebulaCERT platform centralizes and stores the cryptographic keys using qualified signature creation devices or HSMs, thus obtaining maximum robustness, security, and compliance with eIDAS standards. This guarantees safe custody and absolute control in real time over the certificates, their distribution, and use within the organization, knowing at all times which certificate has been used, who, when, and for what.

Integrated with the Víntegris Qualified CA, nebulaCERT enables organizations to issue Qualified Digital Certificates in the cloud and enables users to work with certificates as if they were installed on their workstation.

With nebulaCERT, thanks to the renewal notification system, organizations eliminate the risk of certificate expiration, contributing to a considerable reduction in costs.

Start enjoying the advantages offered to your organization by centralizing your digital certificates with nebulaCERT.

Contact our experts or request a demo!