What is certificate lifecycle management?

This episode of Techsplainers explores certificate lifecycle management, the formal process of managing and securing digital certificates from discovery and issuance to monitoring, renewal, revocation and disposal. It explains how certificates work within public key infrastructure to authenticate nonhuman identities such as websites, servers, applications, devices and AI agents, and why they are becoming increasingly important as machine identities multiply across cloud, DevOps and AI-driven environments. The episode walks through what digital certificates contain, how certificate authorities issue them and the major certificate types organizations commonly use, including TLS or SSL, email and code-signing certificates. It also breaks down each stage of the certificate lifecycle and shows why certificate expiration is both a security feature and an operational challenge. Listeners will learn how certificate lifecycle management tools help automate discovery, create certificate inventories, support renewals and reduce the risk of outages, fraud and misuse. The discussion also highlights why CLM matters for observability, compliance and future cryptographic transitions, including preparation for post-quantum security standards. Find more information at https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/certificate-lifecycle-management Find more episodes https://www.ibm.biz/techsplainers-podcast Narrated by Alice Gomstyn