Case Study: KNAW (Humanities Cluster) automates TLS certificate management with SURFcertificates from SURF

KNAW uses SURF certificates via ACME for certificate management

The customer, KNAW (Humanities Cluster), faced the unsustainable challenge of manually renewing hundreds of TLS certificates for its 700 applications. With certificate validity periods shrinking, this manual process was becoming error-prone and was projected to cost the organization over 700 hours of work annually.

By implementing the SURFcertificates service and utilizing the ACME protocol for automation, SURF provided a solution. This fully automated renewal process saves KNAW approximately 680 hours per year, drastically reduces the risk of outages from expired certificates, and increases overall security. SURF’s platform also serves as a single, reliable point of contact tailored to the education and research sector.

KNAW (Humanities Cluster)

Dorian Harmans

Linux/DevOps Engineer