Keyfactor Research Reveals Digital Certificate Outages a Weekly Reality for 1 in 10 Enterprises

September 30, 2025 at 09:00 AM EDT

Data finds 86% of organizations suffered outages in the past year, exposing the urgent need to overcome automation challenges and visibility gaps

Keyfactor, the industry leader in digital trust for modern enterprises, today announced findings from its Digital Trust Digest: The Automation Edition, conducted in partnership with Wakefield Research. Keyfactor’s research reveals growing pressure on organizations to modernize their certificate management practices as certificate lifespans shrink and automation becomes essential.

The report finds that many organizations are struggling with certificate management. An overwhelming 86% of companies suffered at least one outage and subsequent disruption due to expired or mismanaged digital certificates within the past year, with nearly one-third (31%) reporting outages at least once a quarter. Alarmingly, 10% reported an outage every single week, highlighting the pervasive and disruptive impact of poor certificate management on today’s digital infrastructure. With TLS certificate lifespans set to shorten to just 47 days by 2029, enterprises that fail to gain visibility and automate processes face increased operational risk.

Certificate Outages Persist as Visibility and Staffing Fall Short

Despite the frequency of outages, many organizations still lack the visibility and tools to prevent them. Those in charge of certificate management cited the following as top challenges to successful certificate lifecycle management:

Insufficient staffing or expertise (42%)
The complexity of automating processes (42%)
The shortening of certificate lifespans (42%)
Lack of certificate visibility (34%)

Only 17% of practitioners reported having complete, real-time visibility across all certificates. Without a clear, centralized view of where certificates are, when they expire, and how they’re being used, organizations are flying blind, reacting to issues only after systems go down.

“There is a critical gap between the importance of digital trust and the reality of how organizations are managing it,” said Jordan Rackie, CEO of Keyfactor. “When teams lack visibility into their certificate landscape, outages become inevitable and frequent. This is not just an IT issue; it’s a business risk that disrupts operations, degrades the customer experience, erodes digital trust, and drains revenue. By contrast, enterprises that proactively automate can transform certificate management from a hidden cost into a driver of reliability, trust, and growth.”

Automation Momentum Builds, But Challenges Prevent Widespread Success

Nearly 70% of respondents report pressure to automate certificate lifecycle management, and 84% plan to increase automation investment in the next 12 months. Yet while 53% have automated at least part of their certificate lifecycle processes, 40% report only partial success from automation, and 7% say their efforts failed entirely. Notably, essential processes like certificate renewals are lagging behind, with just 46% reporting automation in this area. The most common factors behind this critical gap include:

Limited internal automation expertise (45%)
Competing business priorities (39%)
Concerns about access controls or approvals (39%)
Challenges integrating automation tools into existing systems (38%)
A lack of available tools (37%)
Insufficient buy-in from leadership (33%)
High costs of automation (31%)

“Automation is essential, but getting there isn’t easy,” said Chris Hickman, Chief Security Officer at Keyfactor. “Enterprises face a perfect storm of rising device volumes, tightening regulations, and shorter certificate lifespans on the horizon. Partnering with trusted experts like Keyfactor allows organizations to set themselves up for more secure, agile, and resilient operations tomorrow.”

Automation as a Business Imperative: Transforming Certificate Management from Hidden Cost to Growth Driver

Even as hurdles persist, PKI and certificate management professionals are clear-eyed about the upside of automation. Respondents expect automation to deliver measurable value beyond operational efficiency, helping them:

Improve compliance and regulatory readiness (49%)
Free up staff for higher-value work (48%)
Reduce outages and disruptions (46%)
Prevent security incidents (44%)
Cut costs (41%)

“Automation is more than risk avoidance,” added Rackie. “Enterprises that proactively automate can transform certificate management into a driver for growth by unlocking efficiency, ensuring compliance, and ultimately, generating profitability. In today’s digital age, certificate automation is a strategic necessity.”

The study, conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Keyfactor, includes responses from 450 public key infrastructure and certificate management practitioners at companies with a minimum of 1,000 employees across North America and Europe.

To view the complete findings and download the Digital Trust Digest: The Automation Edition, please visit: https://www.keyfactor.com/digital-trust-digest-the-automation-edition

About Keyfactor

Keyfactor brings digital trust to the hyper-connected world by empowering organizations to build and maintain secure, trusted connections across every device, workload, and machine. By simplifying PKI, automating certificate lifecycle management, and enabling crypto-agility, Keyfactor helps organizations move fast to establish digital trust at scale. With Keyfactor, businesses can tackle today’s challenges, like growing certificate volumes, manual processes, and new standards and regulations, while laying the groundwork for a successful transition to post-quantum cryptography. For more, visit keyfactor.com.