How to Inventory Certificates and Monitor Expirations with PowerShell
Catch expiring certificates before they catch you — across local stores, IIS bindings, and remote endpoints — in one repeatable workflow.
Expired certificates are one of the most preventable causes of outages — and one of the most common. Modern environments are full of certificates: web bindings, internal services, code signing, device authentication, and more.
Most of those certificates were issued long enough ago that whoever set them up may no longer be around to track them.
A repeatable PowerShell inventory workflow is the only way to keep the picture honest.
Where certificates hide
A complete picture usually includes:
- Local certificate stores on servers
- IIS site bindings
- Listening TLS endpoints on a network
- Internal service accounts and code signing certs
- Certificates referenced by applications and load balancers
Why ad hoc tracking falls behind
Tracking certificates in a spreadsheet is fine until the spreadsheet stops being updated. After that, the next surprise is usually an outage.
An automated inventory that runs on a schedule keeps the data current without depending on memory.
How PSForge helps
PSForge lets you build a certificate inventory and expiration workflow that runs across servers and endpoints, and produces a clear report of what's expiring and when.
Example certificate monitoring workflow
- Inventory certificates from local stores on a server list
- Enumerate IIS bindings and their associated certificates
- Probe TLS endpoints on a target network
- Combine all sources into a single inventory
- Flag certificates expiring within configurable thresholds
- Send notifications for upcoming expirations
- Export a full inventory report
Final thoughts
Expired certificates almost always come from missed visibility, not missed effort.
PSForge helps you build the visibility into a recurring PowerShell workflow so expirations stop being a surprise.