Patent ID: 7650497

Claim:
A certificate management and renewal system for automatically renewing digital certificates in a managed network, comprising: a managing device, said managing device including processing facilities for executing software and further including network facilities for electronic communication over a network, said managing device further including a storage device group containing at least one storage device operable to contain operating system files and applications; and instructions stored to said storage device group, said instructions being further executable by said processor to achieve the functions of: (i) receiving notifications from a certificate authority regarding a managed digital certificate, (ii) identifying a managed server corresponding to a digital certificate referred to in a received notification from a certificate authority, (iii) communicating with the managed server, the communicating causing the managed server to generate a certificate signing request and return the request to the managing device, (iv) transmitting a generated and received certificate signing request to a certificate authority, (v) receiving a certificate signed by a certificate authority generated from a certificate signing request, (vi) identifying a destination managed server corresponding to a received certificate signed by a certificate authority, (vii) installing a received certificate signed by a certificate authority to an identified destination managed server, and (viii) configuring an identified destination managed server to use a private key corresponding to an installed certificate.