Certificates and encryption utilizing them play a critical role in modern systems and network security. Even if none of your email users has a client certificate in their email application, and they’re not using PKI for a VPN connection, they’re using certificates in more than a couple of places on a Windows network with Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange. You say, “Clemmer, I know all this, so what?”

Certificate Import Wizard

As I discovered recently, the need to renew certificates only once every year, two years, or more, can make for some hair-pulling troubleshooting with turnover with IT departments often shorter than that time period and likely sparse internal documentation for the many “set it and forget it” configuration components of the CA infrastructure.

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