Product · Platform

One pipeline from request to renewal

Every certificate in Certheim moves through the same five steps (request, approve, sign, issue, deliver), whether a person asked for it or a renewal timer did. Configure a template once and the lifecycle runs itself.

The lifecycle pipeline

  1. 1

    Request

    Users request one or many certificates from the dashboard. Bare hostnames get your configured domain appended; IP addresses become IP SANs automatically. Named subject profiles switch organizational identity per request.

  2. 2

    Approve

    Per-template policy decides who may approve and what gets auto-approved. Trusted templates can skip straight to signing; sensitive ones require an explicit approver, and every decision lands in the audit log.

  3. 3

    Sign

    Approvers sign in-UI against the CA backend the template names: OpenBao, AD CS, EJBCA, Venafi, AWS Private CA, ACME, or the built-in local CA. Keys never transit a workstation. More on signing →

  4. 4

    Issue

    The issued certificate is verified against the request's public key before it's accepted. A mismatched or substituted cert is rejected, not stored.

  5. 5

    Deliver

    Certheim pushes the certificate to where it lives (an SSH host, a Kubernetes Secret, a vault, or a webhook) with retry and backoff. More on delivery & renewal →

Architecture overview

Request to delivery in one approval-gated flow, then renewed on its own. The same CA backend re-signs, the same destinations receive, and scheduled timers keep certificates from ever lapsing.

Certheim issuance and renewal automation A pipeline (Request, Approve, Sign, Issue, Deliver) feeds an automation engine of scheduled timers (auto-renew, expiry warnings, delivery retry) that re-signs and re-delivers certificates before they expire, with notifications on every event. 1 Request CSR submitted 2 Approve policy-gated 3 Sign in-UI · any CA 4 Issue pubkey-verified 5 Deliver to destination CA BACKENDS · PER TEMPLATE OpenBao · ACME · Microsoft AD CS · EJBCA Venafi · AWS Private CA · CyberArk · built-in ACME DELIVERY DESTINATIONS OpenBao KV · SSH host · Kubernetes Pull token · Webhook (mTLS) · CyberArk ⚡ Automation engine Scheduled background timers: renewals are issued and shipped with no human in the loop. 🔄 Auto-Renew Detects certs nearing expiry, re-signs via the same CA, and re-delivers per-template schedule. Expiry Warnings Notifies owners well before anything lapses, so renewals never sneak up. 🔁 Delivery Retry Exponential backoff on failure; alerts if it finally gives up nothing lapses silently. renew before expiry → re-sign → re-deliver 🔔 Notifications Email Slack Teams Discord Webhook Driven by expiry warnings and delivery events (job.delivered / job.delivery_failed). Every step is written to the append-only audit log.

The pipeline is the same whether a request is brand-new or a scheduled renewal, so once a template is configured, certificates issue, deliver, and renew themselves, end to end.

Deploy anywhere, one codebase

The same application runs on a VM, in a container, on Kubernetes, or fully air-gapped. Pick the shape that fits your boundary, not ours.

VM / bare metal

A signed tarball with an interactive installer for RHEL/AlmaLinux 9. Choose SQLite (zero-dependency) or PostgreSQL, your TLS mode, and local or CAC/PIV authentication. systemd-native with hardened service sandboxing.

Container & Kubernetes

A hardened, non-root image with SBOM + provenance attestations, published to Docker Hub. The Helm chart deploys a clustered install against managed PostgreSQL; a deployment generator emits your values.yaml.

Fully air-gapped

The offline bundle ships everything, a Python wheelhouse included, so nothing is fetched at install time. The license verifies offline; the app makes no outbound calls, ever.

Built to be trusted with your PKI

No phone-home

No telemetry, no license server callbacks, no update pings. Premium editions verify an offline-signed license file. What happens in your enclave stays there.

Append-only audit

Every request, approval, signature, delivery, and admin change is written to a full audit log, exportable and upgradeable to tamper-evident WORM storage in the Government edition.

Verified supply chain

Checksummed release artifacts, container images with SBOM and build-provenance attestations, and a published security.txt with a real disclosure path.

Next up

See it for yourself

Generate a key and CSR in your browser, walk the guided setup, or stand up Community for free. No sales call required.

Questions first? Talk to us. Design partners and air-gapped evaluations are welcome.