Discover and Monitor Your SSL Certificates

Cert Checker discovers, catalogues, and monitors certificates across your organisation.

Why Cert Checker?

• Automated discovery of SSL certificates across the enterprise network
• Automatic certificate expiry alerts and detailed reports
• Fast scanning by IP ranges or hosts file
• Used by different sectors from Financial Institutions to Hosting Companies

The screenshot below shows one way to view the results of a certificate discovery scan.

Key Features

Cert Checker offers many features including:

• Continuous SSL certificate monitoring - not just for HTTPS
• Scans your networks by IP ranges or hosts file
• Lets you specify which ports / port ranges should be checked
• Detects all types of SSL certificates (OV, DV, EV, self-signed etc) from all CAs
• Automated alerts to multiple contacts
• Detailed certificate reporting
• Results can be written to an SQL database
• Supports many protocols including: HTTP/S, LDAP/S, POP3/S, IMAP/S, SMTP/S
• Runs automatically using the Windows Scheduler
• Windows and Linux versions available.

Key Benefits

Red Kestrel's Cert Checker benefits your organisation by:

• Automating certificate inventory
• Supporting business continuity through timely certificate renewal
• Reducing certificate management overhead
• Reducing your organisation's risk of non-compliance

Running Cert Checker in a Console Window

The screenshot below shows the Cert Checker output when run from the console.

More About What Cert Checker Does

Like a passport or driving licence, an SSL certificate has a validity period. When a CA issues a certificate, it includes an expiration date. The certificate's expiration date is normally one or two years from the date of issue. To ensure that a certificate remains valid, it must be renewed with a CA prior to its expiration date. When an organisation has many certificates with different expiration dates issued from multiple CAs the task of managing them can become arduous and error-prone. Cert Checker can reduce the risk of a certificate being left to expire by periodically querying your servers and alerting you in good time when certificates need renewing.

Using an IP range or text file of hostnames, Cert Checker will report the expiration status of each certificate it finds. It provides detailed CSV reports of the certificate information collected; the report format is suitable for importing into other applications such as a spreadsheet or database. While running, Cert Checker can write certificate details to a DOS command window to provide feedback on its progress. In addition, alerts and a summary report can be emailed by Cert Checker to one or more recipients. Cert Checker can be run manually from a DOS command window or called periodically by the Windows Scheduler.

Cert Checker Reports

The report contains important information including whether the certificate has expired or is close to expiration. By scanning down the ExpiryStatus column of a report, you can quickly get a handle on the status of all your certificates. You can configure the number of days before certificate expiry the status in the report changes from OK to EXPIRING. The table below provides a description of each of the fields from the report.

Table 1. Certificate Report Fields