ServiceNow is a leading ITSM platform that helps organizations optimize IT services, workflows, and digital experiences. It streamlines processes like service requests, incident management, and change approvals, improving efficiency and service delivery. Its robust Configuration Management Database (CMDB) provides holistic visibility of IT assets and their relationships.

One critical IT service area that cannot be overlooked in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape is certificate lifecycle management (CLM). Public key infrastructure (PKI) that provides digital certificates enables secure identities for the thousands of endpoints within an organization – ranging from machines and devices to applications, workloads, cloud services, and users. These certificates are vital for securing communications, enabling strong authentication and ensuring encryption. They fortify secure and trusted connections and millions of online transactions daily, making them essential business enablers.

However, poorly managed PKI and digital certificates pose significant risks. Certificate sprawl along with expired, weak, and rogue certificates can result in application outages, security vulnerabilities, and even data breaches. As digital certificates continue to play an integral role in business operations, organizations must adopt robust management practices to mitigate risks and ensure compliance.

ServiceNow provides basic capabilities to manage certificates as IT assets. However, certificate lifecycle management (CLM) is becoming increasingly complex and ServiceNow’s limited CLM capabilities often fail to meet the growing demands of modern enterprises. The vast use of certificates across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the shift towards shorter certificate lifespans (i.e. Apple’s 47-day and Google’s 90-day TLS proposals), and the adoption of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) are all introducing new layers of complexity to certificate lifecycle operations. To address these challenges, organizations need a robust, flexible, and automated CLM solution that can scale with the evolving PKI landscape and drive continuous innovation.

CLM Challenges in ServiceNow

While ServiceNow provides some certificate management functionalities—such as discovery, inventory, and expiry monitoring—it falls short in terms of comprehensive, end-to-end certificate lifecycle automation. As a result, many organizations are forced to rely on manual processes, which can lead to inefficiencies and increase the risk of errors, misconfigurations, and outages. Key challenges include:

1. Limited CLM Capabilities – ServiceNow offers basic certificate lifecycle management (CLM) functionality, such as discovery and expiry tracking. However, it lacks comprehensive discovery, full visibility, and advanced automation necessary to support modern PKI use cases (i.e. DevOps, IoT, containers) across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
2. Lack of End-to-End Automation – Without end-to-end automation, manual processes are often used for certificate provisioning, installation, and renewals which increases the likelihood of misconfigurations and certificate-related outages.
3. Limited Self-Service – Cross-functional teams struggle to obtain quick and efficient access to compliant certificates, which complicates the certificate issuance process, delays workflows and results in the issuance of rogue or unapproved certificates.
4. Weak Policy Enforcement – Limited support for certificate and PKI policy creation and enforcement leads to lack of control and governance, increasing security and compliance risks.

Transform your CLM Strategy with the AVX ONE CLM and ServiceNow Integration

AppViewX AVX ONE CLM integrates with ServiceNow to transform Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM), empowering organizations to adapt to today’s disruptive PKI changes, such as shorter-lived TLS and PQC migrations. By integrating AVX ONE CLM with ServiceNow’s ITSM system, organizations benefit from advanced, comprehensive certificate lifecycle management. This robust integration enables end-to-end automation—from smart certificate discovery and inventory to seamless renewals, provisioning, and last-mile installation. As a result, organizations can enhance visibility, streamline workflows, and enforce policy-driven controls, improving both security and operational efficiency.

How the Integration Works

AVX ONE CLM is available in the ServiceNow App Store, providing a quick and seamless onboarding experience. With both northbound and southbound integration capabilities, organizations can manage certificates using either the ServiceNow or the AVX ONE CLM console. Users can trigger granular certificate requests directly in ServiceNow, which are then routed to and processed by AVX ONE CLM. Alternatively, actions taken within AVX ONE CLM are automatically synchronized with ServiceNow, ensuring complete tracking and visibility.

Key Use Cases for the AVX ONE CLM and ServiceNow Integration

1. Certificate Requests

Cross-functional teams often need certificates for daily operations but lack streamlined access as well as PKI expertise. The AVX ONE CLM integration simplifies and automates the certificate request process by providing self-service request forms within ServiceNow, which enables:

• Seamless enrollment and automated CSR generation/submission
• Streamlined approvals with real-time notifications
• Advanced issuance capabilities including pre- and post-validation checks, and fully automated certificate deployment (push and bind to endpoints) for closed-loop, last-mile installation
• Automated and accurate provisioning, installation, renewals (i.e. every 90 days) and revocations

By automating these steps, AVX ONE CLM reduces delays, improves efficiency, minimizes errors, and ensures compliance with security policies.

2. Certificate-related Incident Management

Certificate-related incidents such as expirations, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities can disrupt services. AVX ONE CLM enhances ServiceNow’s incident management capabilities by offering:

• Comprehensive smart discovery to prevent blindspots – including discovery of on-premises, cloud, container as well as service mesh endpoints
• Real-time monitoring to detect certificate-related issues (i.e., expirations, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities)
• Advanced expiry tracking with customizable alerts
• Automated incident creation, resolution workflows and ticket closure
• Real-time and integrated notifications (i.e. via ServiceNow, Slack, and other tools) to ensure fast remediation

This integration helps prevent outages and strengthens an organization’s security posture by ensuring timely detection and resolution of certificate-related issues.

3. Certificate-related Change and Configuration Management

Certificates require regular updates to maintain trust, security and compliance. The integration with ServiceNow improves change and configuration management by providing:

• Real-time asset synchronization (i.e. syncing certificate inventory data, device details and assets) with the CMDB, ensuring a single source of truth
• Automated notifications and ticketing for any certificate-related changes keeping all relevant stakeholders informed
• Policy-driven control to enforce enterprise-wide PKI policies
• Accurate certificate logging and streamlined audit processes for improved compliance

This ensures that certificate-related data is always up-to-date and aligned with organizational standards.

Benefits of the AppViewX AVX ONE and ServiceNow Integration

• Increased Efficiency – End-to-end automation reduces manual tasks, accelerating certificate operations.
• Enhanced Security – Ensures certificates are continuously discovered, tracked and renewed or revoked, reducing risks associated with rogue, expired or compromised certificates.
• Proactive Outage Mitigation – Real-time monitoring and automated renewals and remediation prevent service disruptions.
• Improved Compliance – Automated policy enforcement and audit trails ensure continuous compliance with security standards.
• Accelerated Operations – Automation boosts agility by speeding up certificate provisioning and renewals.
• PQC Readiness – Comprehensive support for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), hybrid certificates, and advanced discovery/inventory ensures PQC readiness and supports early adoption.

As the complexity of managing digital certificates grows—driven by shorter certificate lifespans and NIST’s timeline for transitioning to PQC—the integration of AVX ONE CLM with ServiceNow provides a comprehensive, automated solution for managing certificates across the enterprise. This integration enhances security, reduces risk, ensures compliance, and boosts operational efficiency, helping organizations stay ahead of emerging threats and evolving standards. By streamlining the entire certificate lifecycle, organizations can unlock new levels of agility, security, and business continuity.

For more information, explore our AVX ONE CLM and ServiceNow integration guide. Contact our team of experts today to schedule a demo and discover how to elevate your certificate lifecycle management strategy.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blogs Archive - AppViewX authored by Cally Fritsch. Read the original post at: https://www.appviewx.com/blogs/streamline-certificate-lifecycle-management-with-appviewx-avx-one-clm-and-servicenow/