Microsoft Aims to Streamline Certificate Lifecycle Management with Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager is getting a new cloud certificate lifecycle management solution for Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The company says that this release will enable IT admins to deploy certificates directly within Endpoint Manager.

For those unfamiliar, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is an encryption framework that enables entities to protect communication between the client and server. It allows the owner to encrypt data, digitally sign documents, and authenticate users, devices, and services with certificates. The Public Key Infrastructure generally consists of elements such as a Digital certificate, Certificate authority (CA), Registration Authority (RA), as well as Certificate database.

According to Microsoft, the new cloud-based solution simplifies how enterprise admins manage the lifecycle of PKI certificates across the organization. Furthermore, it reduces the complexity and skills needed to manage the underlying infrastructure.

“We will introduce a certificate lifecycle management solution that makes the setup and deployment of certificates easier from the cloud,” the company explained. “It will make PKI certificate management simple to set up and provide seamless, passwordless authentication for users. Moreover, as a cloud-based service, it will be highly available and scalable, allowing IT professionals to reduce costs and focus on more strategic tasks.”

Microsoft Endpoint Manager to get automating device vulnerability management feature for third-party apps

Microsoft is also adding an automated device vulnerability management feature to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Endpoint Manager for third-party apps. This new capability brings “continuous detection, assessment, and automated app patching” to help IT teams reduce security risks in their organization.

These new management capabilities were announced at Microsoft’s Windows 11 hybrid work event last week, though there is no precise ETA yet. The company will be sharing more specifics about these improvements over the coming months. Let us know in the comments if you think that the new automated device vulnerability management capability will help to protect enterprise customers from malicious applications.