Home > Servers > Systems Management > White Papers > Eliminate the need to schedule, track, and maintain SSL certificate renewals with new feature in iDRAC9 v4.0 > The qualitative benefits of SSL certificate renewal automation with iDRAC9
Concrete time and steps savings that free up administrators’ workdays are valuable. But what are some of the other benefits of SSL certificate renewal that you can’t find in those numbers?
Why do organizations choose lengthy validity periods for SSL certificates? In many cases, it’s because they don’t perceive the benefits of more frequent renewals as worth the hassle. But there’s something to be said for renewing SSL certificates more often: shorter validity periods mean that your servers benefit from the latest security practices, offering peace of mind for you and your company’s IT staff. For organizations that have strict SLAs requiring shorter validity periods, automation with iDRAC9 can help you meet those targets more easily.
Servers don’t all appear in a data center at once, but arrive as business needs expand. This presents a challenge when it comes to tasks like SSL certificate enrollment and renewals: Servers will be up for renewals at different times, and servers with different workloads may have SSL certificates with different validity periods to meet SLAs. The bottom line? Someone has to keep track of all this so certificates don’t expire and dissuade customers from making purchases due to security concerns. After you use iDRAC9 to set up a new server in your data center, you’ll never have to touch it for SSL certificate renewal again.
Certificates help prevent malicious actors from making unauthorized changes to your servers and compromising your company’s data—that’s why it’s so important to keep SSL certificates up to date. By relying on a manual process to renew SSL certificates, your company risks a lapse in authentication that can pave the way for a cybersecurity breach.
Allowing iDRAC9 v4.0 to track and automate this procedure reduces the risk of server vulnerabilities, adding another layer of confidence in your company’s security.