People should know that CLM or CLMS is also known as certificate lifecycle management. It can also be called a CMS system, which stands for certificate management system. So, here we shall refer to the certificate lifecycle management system as the “certificate management system,” a.k.a. “CMS. CMS is one such platform that permits the admins to handle every portion of the lifecycle of an individual certificate. At the same time, it maintains a broad level point of view regarding the state of the network. Business organizations thinking to put up with the digital certificates should include CMS solution to offer a strong base for their WPA-2 enterprise network.
Four Stages of Certificate –
Stages: i) Enrolment & ii) Distribution of Certificate –
It mainly depends on whom you ask. There are different stages in certificate lifecycle management systems, or CMS, but the differences are mostly semantic. The first stage is certificate enrolment. From the CA (certificate authority), the user or device will request a certificate, which affirms their identity and creates the certificate. The second stage is certificate distribution, in which the certificate is securely sent in a digital format from the CA to the customer requesting the same. It will commonly need an onboarding solution to rationalize the device configuration and make the communications secure.
Stages: iii) Validation & iv) Revocation of Certificate
The third stage is certificate validation, which is the active portion of the certificate lifecycle. During the validation process of the certificate, the RADIUS server will see if the certificate is still within the validity period and confirm that it has not been cancelled and placed on the CRL (Certification Revocation List). The fourth stage is certificate cancellation, which is self-explanatory. If an admin has manually cancelled a certificate, then it will be mentioned in the CRL, and the RADIUS will not identify or authenticate it. Besides that, a certificate that has exceeded the validity period is known as “expired” and not placed in the CRL list.
Authentication is done by CA.
Digital certificates are electronic identifications that are used to authenticate or show the originality of the identities of the devices or individuals using a specific network. You can think of these certificates as a passport or driver’s license. The passport and drivers’ licence are such documents that are issued and confirmed by the governments to authenticate the identity, whereas a digital certificate is issued and confirmed by the CA to authenticate an identity. Passwords are created by people and depend on the phrases or words made by the user, whereas the digital certificate uses a public and private key encryption to secure the data over the air and authenticate it further with EAP-TLS, the most secure protocol for authentication.
IT Departments Don’t Use Passwords
Certificates provide a greater benefit to the IT departments and users in the same way, and they are simple to use and more secure than identity-based authentication. A major part of IT security prefers a process of protecting the account that does not involve passwords at all. Getting away from passwords is easy with SecureW2. But another thing that you ought to note is that certificates are not always valid. They have to go through a lifecycle that is highly influenced by organisational preference. While there can be some variations too, the 4 stages of certificate creation are: certificate enrolment, certificate distribution, certificate validation, and certificate revocation.
