Proactive Certificate Monitoring with AI
Slide 1: Cover Slide
• Title: Proactive Certificate Monitoring with AI
• Subtitle: Prevent Downtime. Protect Trust. Save Cost.
• Presented by: [Your Name / Team]
• Date: [Insert Date]
(Mastercard Confidential – Internal Use Only)
Slide 2: Executive Summary
• Widespread Impact: Expired certificates are a leading cause of outages – about 81% of
organizations experienced a cert-related outage in the last two years 1 . These outages can be
extremely costly (e.g. ~$15M to recover per event 1 ).
• Current Gaps: Legacy, manual monitoring is reactive, time-consuming, and “expensive and
error-prone” 2 3 . Many systems lack proactive alerts, so expirations slip through.
• Our Proposal: An AI-driven monitoring system that automatically scans certificates, predicts
expirations, and issues intelligent alerts well in advance.
• Expected Benefits: No more surprise outages, major cost savings, and stronger customer
confidence from uninterrupted service.
Slide 3: Problem Statement
• Outages from Expiry: Unnoticed expired certificates lead to application failures and degraded
customer experience 4 . Without comprehensive alerts, teams only react after a service breaks.
• Operational Friction: It’s tedious to manually map every server/certificate to its owner or
service. Gaps in tracking mean we frequently miss certificates in non-standard environments.
• Business Impact: Downtime equals lost revenue and SLA penalties. Industry data shows a multi-
hour outage can cost on the order of \$2.9 million 5 . Such incidents also consume engineering
resources (~5.3 hours to fix 5 ) and damage customer trust and brand reputation 4 .
Slide 4: Incident Analysis (Last 12 Months)
📊 Historical Data:
- Frequency: 100+ incidents from expired certificates last year.
- Avg. Resolution: ~2–4 hours (industry avg ~5.3 hours 5 ) per incident.
- Effort: ~5 engineers involved on each incident → ~1,250 engineer-hours/year (~6 FTE-weeks) spent on
reactive fixes.
- Cost Impact: Using \$9K/min downtime estimates 5 , each multi-hour outage could equate to
roughly \$2.9 million lost revenue.
These numbers illustrate the recurring firefight we face. Proactive monitoring can eliminate this overhead.
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Slide 5: Solution Overview
AI-Powered Certificate Monitoring Engine: A cloud-native, agentless solution with the following
capabilities:
- Auto-Discovery: Periodically scans provided IP ranges and FQDNs (using CMDB and inventory feeds)
to collect certificate metadata.
- Expiration Detection: Uses ML/AI to identify certificates nearing expiry or anomalous renewal
patterns.
- Service Mapping: Correlates each certificate to business applications and customer services
(leveraging CMDB relations).
- Smart Alerting: Triggers timely notifications via email, ServiceNow, Slack, etc., with escalation logic for
critical services.
- Central Reporting: Dashboards and reports (expiry calendars, SLA tracking, audit logs) for
governance and visibility.
Outcomes: 100% awareness of cert status, zero downtime from forgotten expirations, and streamlined
compliance auditing.
Slide 6: Technical Architecture (Visual Slide)
Figure: High-level certificate monitoring architecture. Data flows from input sources (CMDB, IPs, FQDNs)
through an AI-based scanning and mapping engine into an alerting and reporting layer 6 .
The system is composed of the following stages:
1. Inputs: Load inventory (CMDB), IP ranges and FQDN lists as scan targets.
2. AI Scanner: Continuously fetches certificates and extracts metadata (issuer, subject, validity, etc.)
from each endpoint.
3. Service Mapping: Resolves which customer apps or services each certificate secures by linking
inventory and DNS data.
4. Alert Engine: Applies expiration thresholds and escalation rules to generate multi-channel alerts
(email, SNOW, Slack).
5. Reporting Layer: Aggregates data into dashboards, renewal calendars, and SLA compliance reports
for stakeholders.
This flow ensures all certificates are monitored and actionable alerts are delivered well before
expiration.
Slide 7: Evaluation from 3 Strategic Angles
Perspective Value Proposition
Consumer ✔ Ensures uninterrupted service availability<br>✔ Early visibility into expiring
Angle certificates<br>✔ Eliminates last-minute surprises
✔ Leverages existing infra (CMDB, alerting tools)<br>✔ Cloud-native, scalable,
Feasibility
and agentless modules<br>✔ Low-code deployment with minimal maintenance
✔ Saves ~1,250 engineer-hours/year (≈6 FTE-weeks) by avoiding reactive
Commercial
fixes<br>✔ Prevents multi-million-dollar outages 5 <br>✔ Strengthens
Angle
customer trust and audit compliance
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Slide 8: Key Benefits
• Proactive Posture: Act long before certs expire. AI-powered monitoring identifies expiring
certificates ahead of time 7 , preventing downtime.
• 🕒 Operational Efficiency: Eliminates tedious manual tracking. Frees up engineering resources
(~6 FTE-weeks/year) for innovation instead of firefighting.
• Security & Trust: No expired certs means no unnecessary security incidents. Maintains
customer trust – expired certificates lead to service outages and reputational damage 4 .
• 📈 Scalability: Designed for hybrid/multi-cloud environments. Scans thousands of certificates
across on-prem and cloud without new agents.
• 📊 Visibility: Central dashboard shows all certificate statuses and renewal timelines, ensuring
governance and audit readiness.
Slide 9: Future Roadmap
Next-Level Enhancements:
- Auto-Renewal Integration: Automate issuance/renewal via AWS ACM, Let’s Encrypt, or internal PKI
APIs.
- Risk-Based Prioritization: Use business criticality to focus alerts on the most important services first.
- AI Predictive Modeling: Learn renewal patterns to predict future expiration trends and bulk renewal
needs.
- Customer Self-Service: Partner portals/dashboard where business owners can view and manage their
service certificates.
Slide 10: Call to Action
• Recommendation: Adopt a phased rollout:
• Phase 1: Pilot with high-value internal services (e.g., payment systems, core APIs) to validate
impact.
• Phase 2: Extend coverage to customer-facing and third-party hosted applications.
• Phase 3: Integrate automated renewal workflows (link with certificate authorities or ACME
protocols).
• Outcome: Transform certificate management from a reactive burden into a proactive capability.
This content is ready to be formatted into a polished slide deck (PPTX or Google Slides) with a modern design
theme (corporate blue, clean icons).
Sources: Industry reports and blogs on certificate management and outages 1 2 5 4 . Each cited
fact underscores the urgency and ROI of proactive certificate monitoring.
1 10 Cases of Certificate Outages Involving Human Error
https://www.encryptionconsulting.com/10-cases-of-certificate-outages-involving-human-error/
2 2020 Certificate Management Survey Results
https://smallstep.com/blog/2020-pki-survey/
3 4 The risks & impacts of SSL certificate outages | Sectigo® Official
https://www.sectigo.com/resource-library/industry-impact-expired-ssl-certificate-outages
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5 7 A real-world view: How expired certificates can cause service downtime and financial losses - Red
Sift Blog
https://blog.redsift.com/certificates/a-real-world-view-how-expired-certificates-can-cause-service-downtime-and-financial-
losses/
6 Monitoring and Alerting Solution Architecture
https://docs.cloudblue.com/cbc/21.0/Monitoring-and-Alerting-Guide/Monitoring-and-Alerting-Solution-Architecture.htm
