Key Takeaways:
- 45% of enterprises experienced downtime due to certificate issues in the past year.
- 37.5% of outages were linked to expired certificates—preventable with automation.
- Financial losses ranged from $50K to over $250K for many respondents.
- 51% of organizations now rank certificate automation as a top 2025 priority.
- Upcoming compliance changes and quantum-era risks demand modernization.
A new DigiCert survey reveals that certificate mismanagement is becoming a significant and often costly vulnerability for enterprises. The report, based on responses from a wide range of organizations, highlights how manual processes and outdated tools are falling short in the face of increasing certificate volumes, tighter compliance requirements, and shrinking certificate lifespans.
According to the findings, nearly half of all surveyed enterprises (45%) reported service downtime stemming from certificate-related issues in the past year. Of those incidents, 37.5% were caused specifically by expired certificates—suggesting a widespread failure to track and renew digital credentials that form the backbone of secure communications and identity in enterprise environments.
Ashley Stevenson, Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing at DigiCert, stressed the urgency: “PKI certificates are the invisible backbone of the world’s digital civilization—and when they are mismanaged, the organizations feel it. The survey findings make one thing clear: manual approaches can’t keep up with the scale, speed, and scrutiny organizations are under today.”
The report found that 51% of enterprises now list automated certificate lifecycle management as a top strategic focus for 2025.
The financial impact of these outages isn’t trivial. One-third of respondents reported losing between $50,000 and $250,000 due to certificate problems. Another 18.5% reported losses exceeding $250,000. Beyond direct financial loss, the operational implications are concerning—more than half of organizations faced between 5 and 24 hours of downtime, and 15.4% experienced 25 hours or more.
This data paints a picture of an enterprise environment where the complexity of certificate management is growing while visibility and preparedness are lagging behind. Despite 80% of companies expecting the number of certificates to rise in the next year, more than half (56.6%) admitted concern about their ability to track expiration dates. Nearly 60% of organizations now manage between 1,000 and 10,000 certificates, a scale that makes manual oversight increasingly unreliable.
The issue is no longer confined to back-office IT teams. It’s become an executive-level concern. The survey found that customer trust (62.2%), regulatory compliance (61.7%), and certificate expiration (56.6%) now rank as the top worries among CISOs and senior leaders. These concerns reflect the growing recognition that certificate management is integral to broader cybersecurity, compliance, and brand protection efforts.
Regulatory developments are adding further urgency. Frameworks such as HIPAA, EU DORA, and PCI DSS are placing greater scrutiny on certificate practices. Meanwhile, anticipated changes from the CA/B Forum will reduce certificate lifespans to just 47 days by 2029. The shift toward quantum-safe algorithms also looms large, with the potential to upend existing PKI configurations and overwhelm manual processes.
To meet these challenges, a growing number of organizations are prioritizing automation. The report found that 51% of enterprises now list automated certificate lifecycle management as a top strategic focus for 2025. Nearly as many (49.5%) are also prioritizing standardization for IoT certificates, another area where scale and fragmentation present significant risks.
Stevenson emphasized that certificate management should now be viewed as a foundational business process, on par with identity management and other security disciplines. “Enterprises need automation and visibility to reduce risk, maintain compliance, and preserve customer trust. Certificate management is no longer a tactical task—it’s a strategic necessity.”
This shift in mindset could help close the gap between certificate growth and enterprise readiness. With the cost of outages climbing and compliance pressures intensifying, organizations that move early to modernize their digital trust infrastructure may avoid the disruptions and losses that continue to plague those relying on manual or fragmented approaches.
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Aside from his role as CEO of TMC and chairman of ITEXPO #TECHSUPERSHOW Feb 10-12, 2026, Rich Tehrani is CEO of RT Advisors and a Registered Representative (investment banker) with and offering securities through Four Points Capital Partners LLC (Four Points) (Member FINRA/SIPC). He handles capital/debt raises as well as M&A. RT Advisors is not owned by Four Points.
The above is not an endorsement or recommendation to buy/sell any security or sector mentioned. No companies mentioned above are current or past clients of RT Advisors.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the participants. While believed to be reliable, the information has not been independently verified for accuracy. Any broad, general statements made herein are provided for context only and should not be construed as exhaustive or universally applicable.
Portions of this article may have been developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence, which may have contributed to ideation, content generation, factual review, or editing
