Media Giant Reduces SSL Certificate Deployment Time by Up To 70%

Client Information

As the world’s largest mass media group, the customer owns and operates motion picture companies, television stations and networks, theme parks, and Internet-based businesses. This US-based company is one of the most acclaimed entertainment businesses and is the recipient of an International Business Leadership award.

Business Challenges

• Certificates associated with ADCs were managed by procurement and administrative services teams using a challenging, sub-optimal process
• The procurement team tracked certificates manually using spreadsheets that maintained budget codes, expiration and renewal dates, etc. Certificate Signing Requests (CSR) for clients were submitted by manual intervention, which often led to documentation errors and reduced company standards
• Private PKI system management and approval/denial of requests were managed by the administrative services team working independently of the procurement services team. Involvement of multiple teams and the lack of a centralized approach created inefficiencies
• Manual management of certificates sometimes resulted in business outages due to missed deadlines or expiration dates

Solutions Delivered

• AppViewX’s Certificate Lifecycle Automation solution optimized the certificate procurement and management process by automating the entire lifecycle management of certificates protecting the client’s various ADC devices
• The built-in integration with internal and external certificate authorities (CA) minimized manual involvement and the usage of spreadsheets was replaced with a systematic inventory process for easier tracking of certificates
• During procurement, CSR for the client could now be automatically generated and passed on to the required CA which eliminated much of the unnecessary documentation errors and compliance issues
• Intelligent work-order processes and granular role-based access control brought in centralized visibility and enabled efficient cross-team collaboration between the client’s administrative services and procurement services team
• Periodic monitoring of renewed or new internal and external certificates has greatly reduced business losses due to sudden downtime or outages. Schedule-based SNMP/email alerts have been set up for expiration alerting and reporting processes to ensure timely renewal of certificates

Business Benefits

• By automating the entire lifecycle management of certificates, the client brought the down the resources needed for each certificate deployment by 83%
• The time it takes for the client to get a certificate issued by the CA and installed on its devices has dropped by 60-70%
• This automation also helped the client cut down the time spent on manual documentation and manual validation by 70%