Preventing ServiceNow-style Root Certificate Outages with PKI Posture Management: Why PKI Spotlight is Critical

In September 2024, ServiceNow suffered a significant outage caused by the failure to renew a root certificate. Unlike a typical certificate expiration issue, this was a deeper problem that affected the core of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The expired root certificate, which identifies the root Certificate Authority (CA) in the environment, had a cascading effect on the validity of all other certificates issued under it, resulting in widespread service disruption for many organizations.

The root cause of this outage underscores the need for comprehensive PKI Posture Management, not just certificate tracking. While certificate lifecycle management (CLM) solutions focus on the lifecycle management of individual certificates, they fail to address the significant PKI health and resilience issues that can lead to outages of this magnitude. PKI Spotlight is different. Our solution goes beyond *just* end-point certificates and ensures the entire PKI is resilient, secure, and always functioning correctly, preventing the types of incidents that brought down ServiceNow.

The ServiceNow Root Certificate Outage: A Deeper Problem

What made the ServiceNow incident so impactful wasn’t just an expired certificate. It was a root certificate, the most critical part of any PKI hierarchy. A root CA is responsible for issuing and signing all other certificate authorities in an environment that, in turn, signs certificates for endpoints (users and devices), meaning that when the root certificate is no longer trusted, neither are any of the certificates in the PKI.

In ServiceNow’s case, the failure to renew the root certificate properly caused every dependent certificate in the system to lose its validity. This crippled the environment, leading to widespread outages across their services. This was not merely a CLM problem—it was a fundamental PKI infrastructure failure.

Why Certificate Lifecycle Management Falls Short

Certificate lifecycle management (CLM) solutions offer tools to track expiration dates and renew certificates before they cause issues. While CLM is important, it doesn’t address the full complexity of PKI. As the ServiceNow outage showed, simply monitoring certificates is insufficient when more significant PKI components, like root CAs, are at risk.

While effective at handling renewals for end-entity certificates, certificate lifecycle management solutions fail to account for the broader PKI infrastructure. These solutions can miss critical aspects such as root CA renewal policies, configuration mismanagement, or cryptographic weaknesses that could affect an entire environment.

Why PKI Posture Management is Essential

PKI Posture Management goes beyond the simple act of tracking certificate expiration dates. It provides a holistic view of your entire PKI infrastructure, ensuring that all components—root certificates, intermediate certificates, and CA configurations—are properly managed and monitored. With PKI Spotlight, we ensure that your PKI is resilient to potential failures like the one experienced by ServiceNow.

PKI Spotlight offers:

1. Root CA and PKI Infrastructure Monitoring: PKI Spotlight doesn’t just track certificates; it monitors the health and validity of your entire PKI hierarchy, including root CAs. This ensures that any critical component, such as a root certificate, is properly managed and renewed before causing widespread disruptions.
2. Proactive Issue Detection: PKI Spotlight alerts administrators to potential issues before they become critical. PKI Spotlight catches these issues early, whether it’s an approaching expiration of a root CA, a misconfigured certificate template, or non-compliance with internal or external security policies.
3. Comprehensive Security Posture: Our solution constantly checks for PKI compliance and security risks, ensuring that weak cryptographic algorithms, improperly configured authorities, or outdated policies don’t lead to vulnerabilities.
4. Preventing Cascade Failures: The ServiceNow outage shows how a single failure in the PKI root can have a cascading effect, invalidating all subordinate certificates. PKI Spotlight prevents this by monitoring the entire chain of trust and ensuring each layer is healthy, preventing such chain reactions.

How PKI Spotlight Could Have Prevented the ServiceNow Incident

Had ServiceNow employed a solution like PKI Spotlight, the outage caused by the expired root certificate could have been prevented. PKI Spotlight’s continuous monitoring would have identified the upcoming expiration of the root CA and sent proactive alerts well before the expiration occurred, allowing administrators to act before issues impact the environment.

Moreover, PKI Spotlight doesn’t just monitor certificates—it validates the overall health of the PKI infrastructure, ensuring that each certificate, from root to end entity, is valid, trusted, and functioning correctly. This holistic approach is critical for avoiding outages like the one that ServiceNow faced, where a single certificate impacted the entire environment.

Conclusion: PKI Spotlight is the Missing Piece for True PKI Resilience

The ServiceNow outage is a stark reminder that PKI management is not just about keeping certificates up to date. When critical components like root certificates are mismanaged, it can lead to a complete breakdown of services. Traditional CLM solutions may offer temporary fixes by automating certificate renewals, but they don’t address the root cause of such outages.

PKI Spotlight fills this gap by providing complete PKI Posture Management. Our solution ensures that your entire PKI ecosystem—from root certificates to end-entity certificates—is healthy, secure, and functioning as it should. Don’t let your organization be the next to suffer from a preventable outage. Invest in PKI Spotlight and ensure your PKI remains resilient and secure, no matter what.