Certificate deployment gap: learn why renewed TLS certificates still cause outages, and how independent verification catches missed deployments before they expire. Download the free whitepaper from Avocado Consulting and 2Steps.
Whitepaper: Avocado Consulting & 2Steps
Closing the Certificate Deployment Gap
Your certificate was renewed — but is every endpoint actually serving it? Discover why renewed certificates still cause outages, and how independent verification closes the gap before it becomes an incident.
For IT Operations and infrastructure teams managing certificates across public-facing and internal systems.
Got the whitepaper? Hear it live. Join our 30-minute online executive briefing on Tuesday 27 October, 11:00am AEDT.
Register for the briefing
The certificate was renewed. Was it deployed?
Certificate lifecycle platforms do a good job of issuing, renewing and deploying certificates. What they typically don’t do is check whether each endpoint is actually serving the renewed certificate. So the change record closes, the certificate authority record looks current, and one endpoint quietly keeps serving the old certificate until it expires.
This whitepaper from Avocado Consulting, in partnership with 2Steps, explains where that gap sits and how to close it without replacing the certificate tooling you already have.
One certificate has to go onto sixteen endpoints.
- Fifteen endpoints updated ✓
- Change record closed ✓
- Certificate authority record current ✓
One endpoint still serving the old certificate.
Every system reports success. Nobody finds out until it expires.
Shorter lifetimes. More renewals. More chances to miss one.
of organisations had at least one certificate-related outage in the previous year.
CyberArk, 2025 State of Machine Identity Security Report
experienced service downtime from certificate-related incidents — and more than half were down for five to 24 hours.
DigiCert, 2025 Trust Pulse Survey
Maximum public TLS certificate validity by March 2029 — roughly 8x more renewals.
CA/Browser Forum ballot SC-081v3
What the whitepaper covers
The current landscape: the latest DigiCert and CyberArk data on certificate-related downtime and losses, and what the CA/Browser Forum’s phased validity cuts mean for your renewal workload.
The deployment gap, explained: how a renewal can succeed on every system involved while one endpoint keeps serving the old certificate — including the 2021 incident that disrupted Fortnite, Rocket League and the Epic Games Store.
Beyond public-facing TLS: why missed deployments on Active Directory, database connections and internal email often go unseen far longer than a public browser warning.
Why independent verification still matters: where certificate lifecycle management adds value, and why the finance principle of independent reconciliation applies to your certificate estate too.
The business case: what fewer outages, faster detection and less manual effort are worth, as renewal effort is projected to climb from 2,000 to more than 24,000 labour hours a year by 2029.
How the verification works: how the 2Steps virtual user connects as a real client, what it checks, and the difference between an expiry safety net and genuine verification.
A practical four-stage process: Discover, Catalogue, Deploy, Monitor — how Avocado layers verification over your existing tooling, starting with a short, fixed-scope Discovery engagement.
What you’ll walk away with
Stop outages before they start
Catch a missed deployment on the next scheduled run after the change window, not when the old certificate expires.
Keep the tools you already have
Add an independent verification layer that complements your certificate lifecycle platform instead of replacing it.
See your whole certificate estate
Understand how Discovery surfaces the internal and uncatalogued certificates your inventory doesn’t know about.
Get ahead of shorter lifetimes
Prepare for renewal volumes that will multiply as certificate validity drops to 47 days.
Route issues to the right team
Turn mismatches into tickets assigned to the accountable owner, so remediation becomes scheduled work rather than an unplanned incident.
Written for the people who get the first call
For IT Operations and infrastructure teams managing certificates across a mix of public-facing and internal systems — the people notified first when authentication fails, and who know the frustration of a certificate that’s deployed yet unused.
Built by practitioners who run monitoring every day
Written by Avocado Consulting’s monitoring and service management specialists, drawing on 2Steps’ agentless synthetic monitoring platform. 2Steps supplies the verification capability; Avocado designs, integrates and operates it.
Produced by Avocado Consulting in partnership with 2Steps.
From Renewed to Verified: hear it live
Take the whitepaper further in a 30-minute online briefing with Avocado Consulting and 2Steps. Bring your questions about your own certificate estate.
- A real example from a large government organisation, and what changed once the gap was addressed
- Practical ways to tell whether this blind spot exists in your own environment
- A framework for independent verification alongside your existing CLM platform
Tuesday, 27 October 2026
11:00–11:30am AEDT
Find out what your endpoints are really serving
Download Closing the Certificate Deployment Gap, then join the live briefing on Tuesday 27 October to see how independent verification catches missed deployments before they become outages.
