- SSH key sprawl (keys created for one-off tasks and never rotated or revoked) is a persistent, under-audited access risk in most organizations
- SSL/TLS certificate expiry is one of the most common self-inflicted outage causes — automated renewal tracking is the actual point, not just storage
- Key Manager Plus also does policy-based CSR generation and integrates with Let's Encrypt and DigiCert for issuance
What It Does
ManageEngine Key Manager Plus automates discovery and vaulting of SSH keys and SSL certificates, centralizes key creation/deployment/periodic rotation, offers one-click remote SSH connections, policy-based CSR generation and signing, out-of-the-box integration with Let's Encrypt and DigiCert, and SSL vulnerability scanning with expiration alerts.
Who It's For
IT/security teams managing enough SSH keys and SSL certificates that manual tracking (spreadsheets, tribal knowledge) has become a real risk — orphaned keys, surprise certificate expirations. A focused point tool rather than a full secrets-management platform for application workloads.
How It Compares
ManageEngine Key Manager Plus
Discovery, vaulting, rotation, and expiry alerting for both SSH keys and SSL/TLS certificates in one console, with direct CA integrations — priced as an accessible point solution for IT teams, not a full application-secrets platform.
HashiCorp Vault
The default for engineering teams managing dynamic secrets for applications and infrastructure-as-code, with a much broader secrets-management scope (not just SSH/SSL). Considerably more setup and operational complexity — built for DevOps-centric secrets management, not simple IT certificate tracking.
Venafi
The enterprise machine-identity/certificate-lifecycle-management leader, built for organizations managing certificates at very large scale across many CAs. Enterprise pricing and complexity to match; overkill if SSH keys and a moderate certificate count are the actual scope.
DigiCert CertCentral
Certificate lifecycle management tied to DigiCert's own CA — strong if DigiCert is already your primary certificate authority and you want issuance and lifecycle tracking in one place. Doesn't cover SSH key management the way Key Manager Plus does.
Bottom Line
- Need SSH key and SSL certificate tracking together, without a full secrets-management platform? Key Manager Plus is the accessible option.
- Engineering team needing dynamic secrets for apps/infrastructure, not just SSH/SSL? HashiCorp Vault is the broader, more DevOps-native tool.
- Very large-scale certificate estate across multiple CAs? Venafi is the enterprise specialist.
- Already standardized on DigiCert as your CA? CertCentral keeps issuance and lifecycle in one place.