It is a common experience that automating certificate lifecycle management (CLM) in a Windows OS environment comes with several challenges. These challenges arise from the complexity of the Windows ecosystem, security considerations, integration issues, and the need for scalability.

Windows OS has multiple certificate stores (Local Machine, User, and Service-specific stores). Managing certificates across these various stores can be complex, especially when automation needs to account for different contexts (system vs user-level certificates). Also, privilege management is an equally challenging task as automating CLM in Windows as it often requires scripts or tools to run with elevated privileges. Ensuring least privilege while still achieving automation is a delicate balance.

To solve this, AppViewX AVX ONE CLM has an inbuilt component, AppViewX Windows Gateway, which solves all these challenges and more.

What is AppViewX Windows Gateway?

The AppViewX Windows Gateway is a component within the AppViewX AVX ONE platform designed to facilitate secure and efficient communication between the AppViewX server and various Windows-based systems in an enterprise network. It not only helps in automating CLM actions like deployment, renewal and revocation of certificates, but also helps in executing scripts to configure Windows Systems as part of a larger network management workflow. Binding to IIS and discovering certificates is also possible with it. Also, the AppViewX Windows Gateway supports management of various Windows applications such as IIS, SQL Server, and more depending on the scripts executed.

Flow Diagram for Windows Gateway:

The AppViewX Windows Gateway agent communicates with the certificate authorities (CAs) via the following three communication modes:

• WMI
• Native API
• PowerShell

The AppViewX AVX ONE CLM user can choose any of the three communication modes to perform CLM actions on Microsoft machines. Let’s look into the prerequisites of above three communication modes:

WMI: Standard remote WMI queries use RPC to connect. Initially, the collector connects to the remote system via TCP port 135. The remote system then selects a high port and instructs the collector to use this new port for subsequent communications. The high port depends on the OS but the current Windows OS uses ports 49152 to 65535. The firewall must allow WMI traffic. Typically, this involves allowing inbound traffic on ports 135 (for DCOM) and 49152-65535 (for dynamic RPC ports). Ensure that these ports are open on both the Windows Gateway
Ports Used: 445, 135 + dynamic port: 49152-65534

PowerShell: PowerShell remoting must be enabled if the Windows Gateway will execute PowerShell commands via WinRM. This is done using the Enable-PSRemoting command.
Port used: Port 5985 is used in WinRM

Native API: Native APIs interact directly with the OS kernel and hardware to offer high-performance capabilities. The Native API mode is only used at Microsoft CA communication. It uses the RPC based protocol for communication and sends a DCOM message.
Port used: 135

The AppViewX Windows Gateway with its enhanced automation makes life easier for a PKI administrator who wants to automate certificate lifecycle management in Windows environments in a secure and efficient way. A dedicated Implementation architect from AppViewX will also help in meeting these prerequisites to install the AppViewX Windows Gateway.

To learn more about AppViewX AVX ONE and automating certificate lifecycle management in Windows OS environments, request a demo today.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blogs Archive - AppViewX authored by Gopal Ji Pandey. Read the original post at: https://www.appviewx.com/blogs/automating-certificate-lifecycle-management-in-windows-os-with-appviewx-avx-one-clm/