Avoiding Outages: A Bank's Journey to Certificate Success with ServiceNow

Written by Mei Yeng | Feb 1, 2024 6:00:00 PM

This multinational banking and financial services company maintains hundreds of external TLS certificates and thousands more internally, which requires lifecycle activities critical for both service uptime and security.

Project Snapshot

3,100

days returned to bank via automation of certificate renewal process

number of certificate-related incidents since solution implementation

Client size: 50,000+

Client industry: Financial

Client location: Global

Key Challenges

On average, it took 2-3 days to renew a web-based certificate. While significant efforts were undertaken to improve this with a custom application, there have been multiple cases of certificates expiring within their environment, causing outage to systems and services. In addition, there have been cases of failed or missed certificate installations causing outages.

	Since 2020, over 15 major incidents caused outages totaling nearly 200 hours to critical services.
	Over 10 Incidents in an 18-month periods were related in some form to certificates (either internal management or process related).

Our Solution

Thirdera, a Cognizant company helped deliver a stable TLS management capability to avoid future service impacts by leveraging and extending the Certificate Management module within ServiceNow.

	Removed customization Migrated the existing custom application to the out of the box module to leverage core platform functionality such as Discovery and Flow Designer.
	Leveraged process automation within existing tools Used playbooks driven by Process Automation Designer (PAD) to drive consistency and visibility around existing processes.
	Reduced manual handoffs Leveraged ServiceNow CMDB to automate task assignment and move away from emails.
	Adopted workflow, reminders, and escalations Used automation to generate appropriate certificate tasks and eliminate emails, ensuring better completion/action based on priority.
	Established visibility with dashboards Provided persona-based dashboards for insights and visibility into Certificate data.

The Result

The company has improved the certificate management process by simplifying the configuration and using out-of-box, automation functionality in ServiceNow to streamline certificate information. This has also reduced upgrade complexity and improved process consistency between teams.

	Enhanced visibility OOB dashboards and workflow tasks ensure process compliance and enable issue resolution before outages.
	Reduced complexity Digital runbooks, process automation, and Flow Designer have simplified workflows and facilitated use of low code solutions.
	Improved efficiencies and productivity 3,100 person days returned by reducing manual certificate renewals.
	Increased system uptime Significant reduction of incidents due to expired certificates. Within the 18 months since solution delivery, no incidents related to the certificate management solution have been reported.

About Thirdera, a Cognizant company

Thirdera, a Cognizant company is an Elite-level ServiceNow partner, enabling customers to maximize the value of the ServiceNow platform through workflow-enabled services and solutions. Founded in 2021 and acquired by Cognizant in 2024, Thirdera, a Cognizant company is one of the largest and most credentialed ServiceNow partners globally. We offer world-class guidance to help businesses accelerate growth and productivity. With expertise and capabilities spanning experience design, process optimization, and AI-accelerated solutions, we are ushering in the next era of transformation, automation, and partner expectation. Visit www.thirdera.com for more information.

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