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📊 Certificate Monitoring

SecTrail CM monitors your certificates 24/7 continuously and prevents service interruptions by detecting issues in advance.

Why is Certificate Monitoring Important?

An expired certificate can cause critical services to crash, resulting in revenue loss and reputation damage. With proactive monitoring, you can detect and prevent issues in advance.

Overview​

SecTrail CM's certificate monitoring system continuously checks the health of your certificates and creates automatic alarms for critical situations.

Key Features​

  • ⏰ 24/7 Monitoring - Continuous automatic certificate status checks
  • 🔍 Proactive Detection - Early warning before problems occur
  • 📊 Centralized Dashboard - View all certificate statuses from a single screen
  • 🚨 Smart Alarms - Customizable thresholds and notifications
  • 📈 Trend Analysis - Certificate lifecycle and usage statistics

Monitoring Metrics​

SecTrail CM collects and analyzes comprehensive metrics for your certificates:

📅 Expiration Monitoring​

Track certificate expiration dates to ensure timely renewal:

  • Expiration Date - Certificate expiration date
  • Days Until Expiration - Number of days until expiration
  • Expiration Status - Valid, Expiring Soon, Expired
  • Renewal Window - Recommended renewal time
Renewal Recommendations
  • 90+ days: Start planning
  • 30-90 days: Initiate renewal process
  • 7-30 days: Urgent renewal required
  • 0-7 days: Critical situation!

🔐 Certificate Validity​

Validate technical validity of certificates:

  • Signature Verification - Signature accuracy check
  • Key Usage - Key usage purpose compliance
  • Extended Key Usage - Extended key usage check
  • Basic Constraints - Basic constraints validation

🔗 Chain Validation​

Verify certificate chain integrity:

  • Chain Integrity - Existence of all intermediate certificates
  • Root CA Trust - Whether root CA is trusted
  • Chain Order - Correctness of chain ordering
  • Cross-Signing - Cross-signing status

🛡️ Security Scoring​

Evaluate certificate security levels:

CriterionEvaluation
Key Size2048+ bit RSA or 256+ bit ECC recommended
Signature AlgorithmSHA-256 or stronger recommended
TLS VersionTLS 1.2+ recommended, TLS 1.0/1.1 insecure
Cipher SuitesUse of strong cipher suites
Security ScoreOverall security score from A+ to F
Security Warnings
  • MD5 or SHA-1 signed certificates are now considered insecure
  • 1024 bit RSA keys are insufficient
  • SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, and TLS 1.1 protocols should no longer be used

Alarm Mechanism​

SecTrail CM continuously monitors certificate statuses and creates automatic alarms for critical situations.

Alarm Types​

SecTrail CM creates different alarm levels for different situations:

Alarm LevelStatusExample
🔴 CriticalImmediate action requiredCertificate expired or will expire within 7 days
🟠 WarningAttention requiredCertificate will expire within 7-30 days
🟡 InfoInformationCertificate will expire within 30-90 days
🟢 OKNo issuesCertificate is valid and healthy

Alarm Triggers​

The following situations create alarms:

  • ⏰ Expiration Approaching - Based on defined threshold values
  • 🔐 Security Issue - Weak algorithm or key size

Notification Channels​

Multiple Notification Channels

You can use multiple notification channels simultaneously for certificates that have entered alarm status.

SecTrail CM supports the following notification channels:

📧 Email Notifications​

The most commonly used notification method:

  • Automatic email delivery to relevant teams or users
  • Direct action links
  • Group or individual notifications
  • Customizable email templates

📱 SNMP Trap​

For enterprise monitoring systems:

  • Integration with centralized monitoring systems
  • SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 support
  • Customizable trap messages

Ownership Management​

Smart Alarm Routing

You can use a flexible ownership model to ensure alarms reach the right people and teams.

SecTrail CM offers a two-level ownership model:

🖥️ Server-based Ownership​

Responsibility assignment at the server level:

Advantages:

  • All certificates on a single server are routed to the same team
  • Organization based on infrastructure responsibility
  • Easy bulk management

📜 Certificate-based Ownership​

Define custom ownership for each certificate:

Advantages:

  • Granular control and responsibility
  • Domain-based organization
  • Custom application ownership

Ownership Priority​

Priority order in case of ownership conflict:

  1. Certificate-based Ownership
  2. Server-based Ownership
  3. Default Ownership
Best Practice

For critical certificates, you can provide dual-layer notifications by defining both certificate-based and server-based ownership.

Reporting and Analysis​

Monitoring Reports​

SecTrail CM generates regular monitoring reports:

  • 📊 Daily Status Report - Daily certificate status summary
  • 📈 Weekly Trend Analysis - Weekly changes and trends
  • 📋 Monthly Compliance Report - Compliance and security status
  • 🔍 Custom Reports - Customized reports based on needs

Dashboard and Visualization​

  • Real-time Dashboard - Instant certificate status
  • Expiration Timeline - Expiration calendar view
  • Alarm History - Historical alarms and interventions

Get Started​