SAP Certificate Management: Automation to Beat the 47-Day Deadline

Managing SAP certificates has become a critical task for every SAP Basis team. With validity periods shortening dramatically, manual certificate management is not only inefficient but poses a serious risk to business operations. Expired certificates can cause system outages, disrupt business processes, and create major security gaps.

The EPOS Certificate Management App covers the entire lifecycle of SAP certificates - from monitoring and renewal through to distribution across the system landscape. It already provides structured, centralized support for these processes; in a future release, full automation will be integrated.

The CA/Browser Forum - a consortium of certificate authorities and browser vendors - has decided to significantly reduce the maximum validity period of TLS certificates in several stages. The goal is to strengthen web security by minimizing the time a compromised certificate could be exploited.

For companies, this means certificates will need to be renewed much more frequently. The graphic below shows the official transition timeline:

• Since 2020, certificates could remain valid for up to 398 days.
• As of March 15, 2029, the maximum validity will be just 47 days.

This development makes manual certificate management via tools such as STRUST virtually impossible and increasingly error-prone. Automation is no longer optional - it’s essential to prevent downtime and maintain system security.

Traditional SAP certificate management is a manual and complex process. SAP Basis teams must handle a wide range of tools and procedures, including the STRUST transaction, the sapgenpse command-line tool, and the management of Personal Security Environments (PSEs), where certificates and keys are securely stored.

It is clear that manual handling of certificates creates additional workload for teams responsible for certificate management within organizations.

The EPOS Certificate Management App was developed to address the growing challenges in SAP certificate management. It provides a central platform that gives SAP Basis teams transparency, control, and – in the future – a fully automated management experience.

The app offers an intuitive web interface that displays all certificates across your system landscape along with their current status. At a glance, you can see which certificates are about to expire and take proactive action. The app monitors not only standard certificates but also those not visible in STRUST, such as SAP HANA, Web Dispatcher, or Host Agent certificates.

For SAP Basis teams, two things matter most: having a complete overview of all critical certificates and being able to manage large numbers of them – sometimes several hundred – easily and efficiently.

The EPOS Certificate Management App meets the essential requirements of a modern, automated SAP certificate management solution. It starts with a user-friendly web UI, a clear display of all certificates with detailed information (from EPOS reporting/collector data showing, for example, which certificates need renewal soon – red indicator – and which remain valid longer, with adjustable timeframes), and includes built-in automated steps and phases based on best-practice processes. The app distinguishes between two phases: simulation and live run.

The app automates the entire certificate lifecycle based on best practices. The process is divided into two phases to ensure maximum security and control:

The EPOS Certificate Management App goes beyond simple renewals. It includes automatic generation of CSRs, automated certificate validation and import, automatic chaining of primary, intermediate, and root certificates, and deletion of expired certificates. Individual application requirements can be flexibly accommodated.

By implementing the Certificate Managemet App, immediate and lasting benefits can be achieved:

You also benefit from features such as generating certificate jobs directly from reporting, Cert/CSR checks, and logic validations. The app supports SAP HANA, Web Dispatcher, and Host Agent certificates – including PSEs that do not appear in STRUST, password-protected PSEs, and Java environments.

Most EPOS customers use multiple apps to drive an automated Central Point of Management. However, you can also use the EPOS Certificate Management App as a standalone solution.