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25/06/2026 12:09 am
TL;DR: Certificate lifecycle management, centralized visibility, and policy-driven cryptographic governance are being embedded into multicloud application delivery as DigiCert joins the F5 ADSP Partner Program, according to DigiCert. The real shift is that certificate operations are moving closer to identity governance, where automation and assurance matter more than isolated PKI administration.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by DigiCert: DigiCert joins F5 ADSP Partner Program to elevate application security and delivery
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern certificate lifecycle automation in multicloud environments?
A: They should start with ownership, inventory, and policy consistency.
Q: Why do certificates become an identity governance issue in application delivery?
A: Because certificates establish machine trust, not just encryption.
Q: What breaks when certificate visibility is fragmented across multicloud platforms?
A: Renewals fail, ownership becomes unclear, and exception handling turns inconsistent.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every certificate to an owner and service dependency Create an inventory that records the application, environment, renewal path, and accountable owner for each certificate.
- Tie renewal and revocation to lifecycle events Connect certificate automation to deployment changes, service retirement, and ownership handoffs so certificates are not left valid after the underlying system changes.
- Standardise policy across clouds before scaling automation Define one policy model for expiry thresholds, approval rules, and exception handling, then apply it consistently across hybrid and multicloud environments.
What's in the full analysis
DigiCert's full press release covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The specific F5 ADSP partner program structure and how Select Partner status is positioned
- References to DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager capabilities inside the integration narrative
- The vendor's own description of automated certificate management across distributed environments
- Program and ecosystem context for customers evaluating application delivery integrations
👉 Read DigiCert's announcement on joining the F5 ADSP Partner Program →
Certificate lifecycle automation in ADSP: what changes for multicloud teams?
Explore further
25/06/2026 9:00 am
Certificate lifecycle management is now an identity governance problem, not just a PKI task. Once certificates are used to establish service trust across multicloud application delivery paths, they become part of the NHI estate. That means issuance, renewal, revocation, and ownership all sit inside the same governance problem space as workload identities and secrets. Teams that still treat certificates as isolated infrastructure objects will miss the access, ownership, and audit implications. The practitioner conclusion is straightforward: certificate governance belongs in the identity programme, not beside it.
A few things that frame the scale:
- From our research: 91% of former employee tokens remain active after offboarding, leaving organisations vulnerable to potential security breaches, according to The 2025 State of NHIs and Secrets in Cybersecurity.
- 62% of all secrets are duplicated and stored in multiple locations, causing unnecessary redundancy and increasing the risk of accidental exposure, according to The 2025 State of NHIs and Secrets in Cybersecurity.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do teams know whether certificate automation is actually improving governance?
A: Measure how many certificates have named owners, how many renewals are handled without manual intervention, and how many exceptions remain open past policy thresholds. If the inventory is still incomplete, automation is only accelerating the same blind spots.
👉 Read our full editorial: DigiCert and F5 link certificate lifecycle automation to ADSP
