KMSYS Worldwide has announced the availability of a free beta of CertMinder for Windows domains. CertMinder is intended to help an enterprise to take control of the SSL and code signing certificates by inventorying certificates, monitoring additions to selected certificate stores and providing early warning of expirations of monitored certificates.
"CertMinder is a tool that provides the solution to the all-too-common problem of certificate expiration dates sneaking up on people," Roy Chastain, senior software developer at KMSYS Worldwide, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "CertMinder is targeted to the network administrator, website administrator or anyone else in the enterprise who needs to keep certificates current."
A single installation on one system, server or desktop, will monitor an entire Windows enterprise. The user interface is a simple click-once application that may be run on any system without installation.
According to Chastain, expired certificates can be problematic. "I have dealt with two otherwise extremely good service providers that have allowed the SMTP SSL certificates expire (on Friday afternoon no less) which halted email relaying. Even KMSYS Worldwide has suffered from the expired website certificate issue, which, by the way, is what prompted the creation of CertMinder." After that, he says, "I sat down and wrote CertMinder."
While administrators could also create a spreadsheet with certificate expiration dates and the systems they are installed on and then look at that list every week to see which ones are about to expire, that never actually happens, observes Chastain. "The auto discovery and auto notification are big value adds in CertMinder."
Chastain is seeking beta users and feature input. "KMSYS Worldwide wants to produce the products that our customers will find useful," he says. For more information, go here.