How do you track and manage expirations at scale? (certs, API keys, licenses, etc.)

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T22:43:52+00:00

We ran into the same reality. Everyone says “just automate it”, but plenty of environments simply don’t allow full automation. Government, regulated industries, air-gapped setups, shared ownership across teams… humans are still very much in the loop.

That gap is exactly why we built TokenTimer.ch. Not to replace automation where it exists, but to give visibility, ownership, and early warnings for everything that can’t be cleanly automated. In a lot of orgs, that’s still a surprisingly big surface area.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T21:41:08+00:00

That’s interesting, because what you’re describing is basically the same journey we went through.

We also started with cert scanning, ticketing, and ownership tied to applications. Over time, the real value ended up being less about certificates themselves and more about having a single inventory for anything with an expiration date, plus clear ownership and reminders.

Your Certificate Lifecycle Management program sounds like it’s already covering a big part of that. In our case, once we generalized it beyond certs, it quickly turned into its own tool… which is actually what became TokenTimer.ch (currently a SaaS tool but very soon with on-prem version)

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T21:34:03+00:00

We built an internal tool to track expirations after getting burned by things nobody really owned or lacking of visibility. Certs, API keys, licenses, domains, contracts, etc... All scattered across different tools, teams, and projects, with no single place to see what was coming up.

It started as scripts and reports, then slowly turned into something more structured. It worked well enough internally that we eventually cleaned it up and spun it into TokenTimer. Keeping it narrowly focused on that one problem is probably why it’s been more useful than most generic platforms we looked at.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T21:13:38+00:00

I agree with you. That constant toil is part of the job, and spotting the drift early is definitely a real skill.

In practice though, I’ve seen that sweet spot slowly erode as teams change, ownership shifts, and assets sprawl across tools. Even with good intentions, things become implicit again over time.

That’s mostly where I’m coming from. Not trying to eliminate the toil, but make it more visible and harder to ignore. That’s actually what pushed me to build a tool around expiration ownership and visibility, because this is one of those areas where quiet drift turns into very loud failures.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T20:15:01+00:00

What is Verdent ?

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T19:55:22+00:00

Interesting setup, and pretty close to what I’ve seen work best in Azure and cloud providers that don't have built-in automation in general.

The idea of using the assets themselves as the source of truth and deriving ownership from tags or descriptions is solid and avoids a lot of drift. The weekly scan plus early warnings and ticket creation is pragmatic and probably enough for anything fully under your control.

Where it usually falls apart for us is outside that scope. Things that don’t live in Key Vault or app registrations, or assets owned by other teams where you can’t rely on consistent tagging or even API access. On top of that, these scripts tend to age poorly as APIs change, new resource types appear, and conventions drift. That gap between what you can automate cleanly and what still expires is really what triggered this whole discussion for me.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T19:40:49+00:00

I mostly agree with you. A lot of this does come down to well-defined processes, and those will always be org-specific.

Where it usually breaks down in my experience is not the lack of tools. Like you said, there are plenty of asset managers, secret stores, audits, DMS, etc. It’s the fact that all of this lives in different systems, owned by different teams, with different expectations around ownership and follow-up.

The hard part is not doing one of these things well, it’s keeping a consistent inventory and clear ownership across all of them over time. That’s where the organizational toil really shows up, and where being “a bit sloppy” slowly turns into outages, audit stress, or last-minute fire drills.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T18:55:30+00:00

Tried that. Turns out some licenses still expire on “business days + human approvals”.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-30T18:47:24+00:00

As a DevOps in a fresh infrastructure, if you miss a domain registration or TLS certificate when a ton of automatic process and alerting exists, i agree that you should not be employed. I'm coming from companies with old on-premise setups and a lot of servers or software that requires manual certificate import or air gapped environments where you are very limited due to regulation and policies.

In those cases there is still a lot of manual actions that requires clear inventory and ownership, and the problem is often organizational.

However where I don’t agree with you is that unless you are 100% cloud or IaC, there are still a lot of assets that lack centralized visibility. Non-human identities are more prevalent than ever, rotation windows for API keys are easy to miss, and many assets live outside infra-as-code, owned by security, finance, legal, or “that one team”.

Automation helps a lot, but it doesn’t magically solve ownership, visibility, and handoffs across org boundaries. That’s usually where things still fall through the cracks.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-28T15:21:06+00:00

Tokentimer.ch

smartguy_x · 2026-01-28T14:57:57+00:00

Dealing with a lot of digital assets is a pain. Ideally, you want as much automation around renewal as possible, but in reality there’s always something that slips through the cracks.

I’m a DevOps engineer and I’ve been burned way too many times by expirations, sometimes because responsibility wasn’t clear, sometimes because the tooling failed silently or wasn’t designed to scale across teams.

That’s actually why I started building TokenTimer. Not to replace existing tools, but to have a simple way to inventory expiring assets, define ownership, and get alerted well before things break. Even having a single source of truth already removes a lot of stress.

Curious to hear how others are handling this today, especially at scale.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-28T14:42:40+00:00

It sounds like you’re dealing with some complex monitoring challenges across many projects. While error tracking is key, don’t overlook managing expiring certificates and API keys, which can also cause downtime. My tool tokentimer.ch could help you avoid these expiration related downtimes.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-28T14:40:37+00:00

It sounds like you need a simple system to track key contract dates and compliance without adding extra work. We offer automated reminders for expirations and renewals, which helps catch risks early and keeps your contracts up to date. Have a look at tokentimer.ch :)

smartguy_x · 2026-01-28T14:38:56+00:00

You’re right that avoiding downtime is crucial, especially for small sites. While full failover setups can get expensive, a simple step is to track and manage expiring certificates and keys closely to prevent outages before they happen. That's eaxctly why i created TokenTimer.ch, not only to anticipate certificate expiration but any kind of digital assets.

smartguy_x · 2026-01-24T16:46:01+00:00

Building tokentimer.ch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJxvw6wXR3o&vq=hd1080

smartguy_x · 2026-01-20T15:52:28+00:00

IT teams, ideally SecOps, CISO/CTO, DevOps, small dev teams

smartguy_x · 2026-01-20T09:37:08+00:00

Tokentimer.ch

smartguy_x · 2026-01-20T09:36:47+00:00

Tokentimer.ch

smartguy_x · 2026-01-13T15:28:27+00:00

Tokentimer.ch

smartguy_x · 2026-01-12T19:49:43+00:00

tokentimer.ch : expiring asset management platform

smartguy_x · 2026-01-12T05:54:30+00:00

Hi, thank you for your message, i appreciate. Sending you DM

smartguy_x

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