Connecting HPE Nonstop to DigiCert: Automating Certificate Lifecycle Management with NuWave ActivCERT

~ NuWave Technologies

For decades, HPE Nonstop systems have powered some of the world's most critical business operations. From financial transactions and payment processing to healthcare and enterprise infrastructure, these environments are trusted for their exceptional reliability and continuous availability.

But even the most resilient systems face a growing security and operational challenge: managing digital certificates as their validity periods become shorter. 

As certificate lifecycles shrink, traditional manual renewal processes become increasingly difficult to maintain. Organizations must ensure that certificates are renewed, deployed, and ready for use before expiration to help prevent disruptions to mission-critical applications.

For enterprises already using DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager, this raises an important question: How can existing certificate lifecycle management strategies be extended to HPE Nonstop Guardian environments?

NuWave ActivCERT helps address this challenge by bringing certificate lifecycle automation to HPE Nonstop.

The Challenge: Certificate Management on HPE Nonstop

Enterprise organizations often manage hundreds or thousands of digital certificates across their infrastructure. These certificates help secure communications between applications, servers, APIs, and external business partners.

Many organizations rely on enterprise Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) platforms, such as DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager, to centralize certificate visibility, automate renewals, and support security policies.

However, certificates used within HPE Nonstop Guardian environments may require separate operational processes to participate in the enterprise's broader certificate management strategy.

This can create several challenges:

Manual certificate renewals: Administrators must track expiration dates, coordinate renewal requests, and deploy replacement certificates.

Increased expiration risk: Missed renewals can lead to failed secure connections, application errors, and service interruptions.

Disconnected security processes: Nonstop certificates may be managed separately from certificates across the rest of the enterprise.

Growing administrative workloads: Shorter certificate lifetimes increase the frequency of renewal and deployment activities.

Governance challenges: Maintaining consistent visibility and renewal practices across different platforms becomes more difficult.

For organizations operating mission-critical systems, these challenges extend beyond routine administration. An expired certificate can interrupt secure communications even when the underlying HPE Nonstop system remains fully operational.

The Solution: NuWave ActivCERT and DigiCert

NuWave ActivCERT is designed to automate certificate lifecycle operations within HPE Nonstop Guardian environments, helping organizations extend their certificate management strategy to infrastructure that may otherwise require manual administration.

When used as part of an enterprise certificate management workflow involving DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager, ActivCERT provides the Nonstop-side automation capabilities needed to support certificate monitoring, renewal, and deployment.

This approach allows organizations to build on their existing enterprise certificate management investments while addressing the operational requirements of HPE Nonstop.

Rather than treating Nonstop certificates as an isolated responsibility, organizations can work toward a more consistent certificate lifecycle process across their infrastructure.

How the Integration Works

Consider a financial institution operating multiple HPE Nonstop systems that support payment processing and transaction authorization. The institution uses DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager as part of its enterprise certificate management strategy and wants to extend automated certificate operations to its Nonstop environment.

A typical supported workflow can involve the following stages:

1. Certificate Lifecycle Monitoring

ActivCERT monitors configured certificates within the HPE Nonstop Guardian environment and identifies certificates approaching their configured renewal thresholds.

2. Renewal Initiation

When a certificate reaches its renewal window, ActivCERT initiates the appropriate renewal workflow through the configured certificate management integration.

3. Certificate Issuance and Management

DigiCert's certificate management infrastructure processes the request according to the applicable issuance policies, authentication requirements, and certificate authority configuration.

4. Certificate Retrieval

Once the certificate has been issued or renewed, ActivCERT retrieves the certificate and associated chain information through the supported integration workflow.

5. Certificate Deployment

ActivCERT carries out the configured deployment operations within the Nonstop environment, helping make the renewed certificate available to its intended consumers.

6. Continued Lifecycle Management

ActivCERT continues monitoring configured certificates for future renewal requirements, supporting a repeatable lifecycle process with less manual intervention.

The exact integration mechanism, supported certificate stores, and deployment procedures depend on the ActivCERT release and DigiCert configuration. Application-specific reload or restart requirements should also be validated as part of implementation planning.

Why DigiCert Customers Should Consider ActivCERT

Extend Enterprise Certificate Management to Nonstop

Organizations have invested in enterprise certificate management platforms to improve visibility, standardize processes, and automate certificate operations.

ActivCERT helps extend those initiatives to HPE Nonstop Guardian environments. By providing dedicated automation capabilities for Nonstop, it helps organizations incorporate these systems into a broader certificate management strategy without requiring a separate enterprise CLM platform solely for Nonstop.

Reduce Certificate-Related Operational Risk

Expired certificates can interrupt secure communications between applications, services, and business partners. In mission-critical environments, such disruptions can affect business continuity and transaction processing.

Automated monitoring and renewal workflows help reduce the likelihood of missed renewals. Certificate deployment and validation processes remain important to ensuring that renewed certificates are available and functioning as intended.

Prepare for Shorter Certificate Lifetimes

Certificate validity periods are becoming shorter, increasing the frequency with which organizations must manage renewals.

For publicly trusted TLS certificates, the industry is moving toward a maximum validity period of 47 days by 2029, with intermediate reductions along the way. Processes built around annual renewals will need to adapt as renewal cycles become more frequent.

Automation can help organizations prepare for these changes by reducing reliance on manual tracking, certificate handling, and repetitive deployment tasks.

Reduce Administrative Workloads

Certificate management involves more than obtaining a renewed certificate. Administrators may also need to retrieve certificate files, install replacements, validate deployments, coordinate application dependencies, and troubleshoot failures.

ActivCERT is designed to automate supported portions of these lifecycle operations within HPE Nonstop, helping reduce repetitive work and improve operational consistency.

Support More Consistent Security Practices

Bringing Nonstop certificate operations into a broader enterprise management strategy can help organizations establish more consistent renewal practices, improve operational oversight, and support internal security requirements.

ActivCERT provides dedicated certificate administration and background lifecycle management capabilities for HPE Nonstop Guardian environments, helping bridge the gap between enterprise certificate management and mission-critical infrastructure.

Industry Applications

Automated certificate lifecycle management can benefit organizations across industries that rely on secure communications and continuous availability.

Financial services and banking: Support certificate lifecycle operations for systems handling payment processing, transaction authorization, and financial communications.

Retail and payment processing: Help maintain certificates used in secure communications between Nonstop transaction systems, payment services, and external partners.

Healthcare: Support certificate management for mission-critical applications exchanging sensitive information through encrypted connections.

Enterprise infrastructure: Extend certificate automation initiatives to HPE Nonstop alongside other platforms within the organization.

Understanding the Operational Impact

Consider an enterprise managing 100 certificates within its Nonstop environment.

If every certificate required renewal every 90 days, the organization would handle approximately 400 certificate renewal events annually. At a 47-day cycle, that figure could rise to approximately 800 events per year.

These figures are illustrative scenarios based on a constant number of certificates and evenly recurring renewal cycles, not a prediction of the exact workload for every organization. Actual renewal frequency depends on certificate validity, issuance timing, and organizational policies.

Nevertheless, the example demonstrates how shorter certificate lifetimes can significantly increase operational activity. Each renewal may involve coordination, retrieval, deployment, validation, and troubleshooting.

By automating supported lifecycle tasks, ActivCERT can help organizations reduce repetitive administration and lower the risk of missed renewals as certificate management demands grow.

Connecting the World's Most Critical Systems to WHAT'S NEXT

HPE Nonstop systems are designed to deliver exceptional availability and reliability. The processes that protect their secure communications should reflect that same commitment to operational excellence.

With NuWave ActivCERT and an enterprise certificate management platform such as DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager, organizations can work toward a more automated and scalable approach to certificate lifecycle management across their infrastructure.

By extending certificate automation to HPE Nonstop Guardian environments, ActivCERT helps organizations build on their existing investments, reduce manual effort, and prepare for increasingly demanding certificate management requirements.

Your enterprise already has a certificate management strategy. NuWave ActivCERT helps bring HPE Nonstop into it.

NuWave Technologies - Connecting the world's most critical systems to WHAT'S NEXT.