The incident you describe sounds all too familiar. Here, things were changed a few years ago to where the Computer Operators group was given the task of acting on cert expiration notices from the CA. After renewing the cert, they send a link to the application owner/Web site owner for downloading the cert. The application owner is then responsible for both adding the cert to the store and assigning it to their site or app. (For better or worse, they have Admin rights on their servers.)
I have typed up straightforward instructions for getting the cert into their sites (IIS only, as I'm strictly a Windows SysAdmin). At first we continued to get calls from app owners who couldn't seem to get it right, but that seems to have stopped happening. Bottom line is that I believe the model has worked out well. Our director had been trying to find work that the Operators can do, so that they're not being paid to just sit monitoring performance, etc. The CA has a pretty good system of notifying of expiration and providing the cert files, so the Operators just need to be on top of it. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Raper Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2016 6:51 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] Opinion / poll - Certificates - Infrastructure, or Apps? Hi all, The subject line says it all. I'm trying to work out a point of delineation between our apps and infrastructure groups as to who owns what....I see certificates as a point of question.... So, what do you all think? For those of you who deal with larger environments, who handles the certs? The application team or the Infrastructure team? I realize that there are exceptions to every rule, but I'm talking in generalities here. I'm not talking about the actual generation of the cert, but say you have an app group that has their own custom application, and they need a cert. Infrastructure procures it, and then hands it over to the apps team to install, or the infrastructure team asks where it needs to be installed and then installs it? Case in point - we had an app that broke today because the cert was not properly bound to the site in IIS. The Infrastructure team installed the cert to the servers in the proper store, and then alerted the apps team that it was there....apps team took no action, and did not communicate back that they took no action, and so then the infrastructure team took no action because the assumption was that it was an apps team responsibility once the cert was on the server.....but then the infrastructure team ended up fixing it in the end. Thanks, Jonathan NOTE: This message and any attachments is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, legally privileged, confidential, and/or exempt from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the original sender immediately by telephone or return email and destroy or delete this message along with any attachments immediately.
