Machines are beginning to greatly outnumber humans in organisations. According to CyberArk’s “State of Machine Identity Security Report,” for every human identity in an organisation, there are 82 machine identities. Additionally, 42% of machine identities have sensitive access, compared to 37% of humans. This makes Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates essential for identifying and verifying machines during network communications.
As a fundamental element of cybersecurity infrastructure, TLS is intrinsically connected to machine identities. However, these certificates expire, and failure to renew them leads to heightened security risks, service outages, operational failures, and a decline in customer experience.
Despite the importance of its role, organisations are still dropping the ball when it comes to managing TLS certificates. According to the same CyberArk “State of Machine Identity Security Report” referenced earlier, 67% still experience monthly outages related to expired certificates. Separately, CyberArk’s eBook “CLM 101: Your Ultimate Guide to TLS Certificate Management” reports that 57% of CIOs have experienced at least one data breach related to compromised certificates within the previous 12 months.
How poor TLS certificate management harms organisations
The primary drivers of poor certificate lifecycle management (CLM) often stem from a fundamental lack of visibility and intelligence. When organisations rely on manual tracking and archaic spreadsheets, they struggle to keep pace with the exponential growth of machine identities.
This challenge is particularly acute in Singapore’s rapidly digitalising landscape, where the complexity of hybrid environments — spanning on-premises infrastructure, multi-cloud set-ups, and specialised IoT devices — makes it nearly impossible to maintain a unified view of the security posture.
Recent projections from the same CyberArk eBook indicate that the number of machines leveraged by enterprise teams will grow by at least 39% over the next two years. This surge will trigger a proportional increase in TLS certificates, creating an administrative overload for organisations still tethered to inadequate legacy systems.
From a resource perspective, manual management is increasingly unsustainable. Manually tracking, validating, and updating a single TLS certificate can consume up to 20 hours of administrative labour, according to the same eBook. When multiplied by hundreds or thousands of certificates, the burden on an organisation’s manpower is immense.
Plus, without a complete and accurate inventory, IT teams cannot detect irregular usage — a key indicator of a potential breach — or prevent unexpected expiries. An expired certificate on a critical piece of infrastructure, such as a load balancer, can trigger simultaneous outages across multiple systems and halt business operations instantly.
The stakes have also increased with the exponential rise of smart machines powered by AI. These systems often make autonomous decisions without human intervention. If a cybercriminal gains access to these machine identities by exploiting an out-of-date TLS certificate, they can manipulate the logic and outcomes of complex automated tasks, leading to catastrophic security failures.
The role of automation in CLM
In an era where certificate outages are frequent and the volume of threats is rising, manual certificate creation and management are no longer fit for purpose in Singapore’s digital economy. Modern cybersecurity demands the ability to respond swiftly to cryptographic vulnerabilities, a concept often referred to as “crypto-agility.”
Relying on human intervention in such a high-stakes environment introduces significant latency, making it difficult to keep pace with the rapid lifecycle shifts required to secure a modern digital infrastructure. Automation addresses these systemic weaknesses by reducing the risk of human error and deploying, installing, rotating, and replacing certificates across the network. This capability is particularly vital during critical security events, such as a certificate authority compromise or a zero-day vulnerability found within a cryptographic algorithm or library.
Beyond emergency response, automation supports maintaining consistent governance. It allows Singapore organisations to enforce corporate certificate management policies and adhere to local and international regulatory requirements.
When individual administrators are left to manage compliance for their respective silos, policy enforcement becomes fragmented and inconsistent. Centralising this through automation helps ensure that every certificate across the organisation meets the same standards, turning the historically error-prone task of validating installations into a more consistent process.
Automation provides the foundation for continuous oversight. By assisting organisations in monitoring the security and health of their certificate inventory, these tools can offer real-time insights into potential weaknesses.
Scaling certificate management
In Singapore’s digital landscape, certificates are widely used across network and security infrastructures. An effective CLM protocol is increasingly important for organisations, particularly as certificate lifespans are set to shrink over the next few years.
Relying on manual processes and ineffective tracking introduces operational and security risks. Moving to automated approaches changes how certificate management is handled, shifting teams away from reactive “Whack-A-Cert” renewal cycles towards more structured oversight.
Automated CLM allows organisations to discover and monitor certificates, assign ownership, and execute renewals before expiration. By enforcing policies and certificate attributes consistently, teams can reduce time spent on manual processes. Over time, this can support system stability and more predictable release cycles.
