Certificate revocation lists: are your PKI checks keeping up?

TL;DR: Checking a certificate revocation list is a core PKI operation because it lets teams verify issuer status, inspect revoked serial numbers, and detect stale or unreachable revocation data, according to Keyfactor. The governance issue is not whether revocation exists, but whether enterprise workflows can actually validate and act on it before trust decisions are made.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Keyfactor: How to View and Check a Certificate Revocation List

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams verify certificate revocation in production?

A: Security teams should verify revocation by checking the certificate’s CRL Distribution Point, downloading the current CRL, and matching the certificate serial number against the revoked list.

Q: Why do CRL failures create identity governance risk?

A: CRL failures create identity governance risk because the trust decision depends on current revocation evidence.

Q: What breaks when certificate revocation data is stale or unreachable?

A: When revocation data is stale or unreachable, relying systems may continue to trust certificates whose status has changed.

Practitioner guidance

• Validate CDP reachability in production paths Test every CRL Distribution Point from the same networks, build runners, and application segments that consume certificates.
• Monitor Next Update as an expiry control Alert before the Next Update timestamp passes and treat missed publication as an operational incident.
• Standardise CRL parsing across teams Use the same OpenSSL and Windows validation methods for troubleshooting, and document how to handle DER to PEM conversion.

What's in the full article

Keyfactor's full guide covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Browser-by-browser steps for locating the CRL Distribution Points field in certificate viewers.
• Exact OpenSSL, certutil, and EJBCA commands for downloading and inspecting CRLs.
• Practical troubleshooting for expired lists, unreachable CDPs, and DER versus PEM format issues.
• Workflow examples for monitoring CRL freshness and integrating checks into automation.

👉 Read Keyfactor's guide to viewing and checking a certificate revocation list →

Certificate revocation lists: are your PKI checks keeping up?

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