Partner Post: NETSCOUT's Government Use Case: SSL Certificate Validation

Presence of a self-signed certificate on the firewall investigated and resolved within 24 hours.

Author: NETSCOUT

Goals: Maintain valid SSL certificates for all devices in the environment with a focus on internet-facing devices.

• Proactively detect and issue updated SSL certificates in order to eliminate lapses in trust for crucial servers in the environment.
• Identify communications with untrusted servers.
• Rectify devices with expired or soon-to-be expired SSL certificates.
• Gain visibility to the conversations being sent to servers utilizing self-signed certificates.

Process: nGeniusONE used to detect and report the status of all devices’ SSL Certificates based on inspection of packets sent across a monitored link.

• Run Certificate Monitor module against the interface corresponding to the desired monitored link.
• Alerts configured to send e-mails whenever self-signed certificates are detected.

Results: Immediate visibility to all SSL certificates for devices communicating across the link including count of certificates, days to expiration, TLS version for each device.