essendi cd – Certificate Discovery Tool for Enterprise Crypto Inventory

Discover certificates, identify dependencies, and centralize cryptographic visibility

essendi cd is a certificate discovery tool that identifies digital certificates across distributed infrastructures. The solution discovers SSL/TLS certificates, analyzes certificate authorities, and creates a centralized certificate inventory. Organizations gain visibility into certificate expiration dates, dependencies, and lifecycle status — reducing manual effort and minimizing human error.

Uncover blind spots and discover certificates across your infrastructure. Make cryptographic dependencies transparent.

essendi cd discovers digital certificates and cryptographic assets and assigns them to their context of use. It thus creates the foundation for reliable control, operations, and compliance.
Distributed cryptography becomes a manageable foundation for stable IT operations.

Complex infrastructures require manageable cryptography.

Cryptography can only be managed when it is fully visible. Cryptography is now business-critical. It secures digital identities, applications, clouds, and machines, forming a central foundation for stable, IT-driven business processes. At the same time, many organizations still lack a complete overview of their cryptographic assets.

Certificates, keys, and cryptographic algorithms have evolved over time—spread across teams, tools, and platforms, with manual processes and unclear ownership. As long as everything works, this gap often goes unnoticed. Only when certificate expiration causes outages, systems fail, or audits expose weaknesses does the true scale of the risk become clear.

External pressure is intensifying the situation. Regulatory requirements demand demonstrable control, clear accountability, and reliable evidence. New threats, cloud dependencies, and preparation for post-quantum cryptography add further urgency. Cryptography must therefore be evaluated and managed deliberately—not reactively, but strategically.

A centralized certificate and crypto inventory is the prerequisite. It creates transparency across the cryptographic estate, makes dependencies visible, and enables informed decisions—for stable operations, reliable compliance, and a future-ready crypto strategy.
See how this approach proves itself in everyday use.

Identify risks early.

The importance of cryptographic assets lies in the context in which they are used. essendi cd creates transparency by discovering certificates and capturing cryptographic assets and assigning them to their business and technical context.

Certificates, keys, and cryptographic algorithms become visible across relevant environments—from on-premises to the cloud. essendi cd also includes edge and surrounding systems in the analysis—areas often overlooked by traditional scans.

This makes it possible to consistently assess dependencies, lifetimes, ownership, and risks. Early risk detection and informed decisions in operations, compliance, and security become possible.

From transparency to operational control.

Only full transparency makes cryptography manageable. The information gained in the crypto inventory makes it possible to identify risks against business and regulatory requirements, assess them in a targeted way, and address them in a prioritized manner.

The granular mapping of cryptographic assets to contexts of use, systems, and accountable owners creates the foundation for evaluating dependencies in a differentiated way and preparing segmented operating and security models.

Building on this, cryptographic measures can be managed proactively: Certificate renewals, migrations, and algorithm changes are planned and traceable. Cryptographic assets remain reportable and auditable at all times.

This turns pure visibility into operational control. Organizations can run their cryptography reliably, take regulatory responsibility with confidence, and continue evolving it strategically.

What makes essendi cd different.

Enterprise Certificate Discovery and Crypto Inventory

With essendi cd, cryptography in complex infrastructures becomes manageable—not just visible. The crypto inventory becomes the starting point for control, decision-making, and day-to-day operations.

Structured Certificate Discovery Across Distributed Systems

essendi cd is a certificate discovery tool that discovers digital certificates and cryptographic assets across complex IT environments. The solution identifies SSL/TLS certificates, analyzes certificate authorities, and maps dependencies to reduce manual effort and human error.

Centralized Certificate Inventory and Lifecycle Visibility

All discovered certificates are consolidated into a central certificate inventory. This enables monitoring of certificate expiration dates, lifecycle status, and dependencies across distributed systems.

Operational Certificate Data for Security and Compliance

Structured certificate data supports data security, compliance reporting, and integration into existing web services and monitoring tools. Organizations gain a complete certificate list for informed operational decisions.

Purpose-Built for Structured Certificate Discovery

Unlike generic discovery tools, essendi cd not only identifies certificates but also classifies them by context, ownership, and dependencies. This structured certificate discovery reduces manual effort, supports reliable data security, and strengthens digital sovereignty through open, reusable inventory data.

Certificates found. Now what?

essendi cd was developed by essendi it AG (Switzerland) and is designed to make certificates visible and create transparency about their usage, status, and context. The tool complements certificate management with enterprise-wide visibility, classification, and decision support. For sustainable day-to-day operations, however, visibility alone is not enough.

To control and operate discovered certificates long-term, centralized certificate lifecycle management is required. This is the next level: governance, administration, and automation across the entire lifecycle.

essendi cd is deliberately designed as an open solution. Captured certificate data can be exported and integrated into existing management and operational processes. essendi xc offers one integrated solution for this, but it is not a technical requirement. Integration with other systems—such as ticketing and SIEM systems—is also possible, and export to CBOM formats is supported.

This creates a flexible approach: targeted discovery with essendi cd and seamless downstream processing in existing certificate management environments.

In many environments, essendi xc takes on this role. There, certificates are used for automated lifecycle management, compliance evidence, and standardized processes.

Experience essendi xc in action.

Live demo

essendi cd is part of the essendi crypto solutions. Together with essendi xc, essendi da, and essendi pki, it forms a comprehensive approach for discovery, lifecycle management, and operation of cryptographic infrastructures.