Abandoning Self-Signed SSL Certificates?

Question

Hello,
I'm working on remediation of some security flaws and have encountered a finding that calls out each of my domain-added workstations as having self signed SSL certificates.  I'm not an expert on the subject, but I do know the following things:
1)  An earlier finding lead to me disabling all forms of SSL on my servers and workstations
2)  Workstations use certificates to identify themselves to other domain assets.
Now my servers all have their own certs signed by an outside authority.  However, it would be a huge amount of work to go through the process for each and every workstation.  So my questions are these:
1)  Can I create a NON-SSL self signed cert for these machines to use?
2)  How do I remove these current SSL certs without having to hover over each workstation?
Basically, what's the least effort to remove self-signed SSL certs and replace them with something more secure?
Thanks,
M.

Answer 1

What do you mean when you say that you've disabled all forms of SSL on your servers and workstations? SSL serves to provide secure communications for all of your domain operations, so disabling SSL, in general, would likely break your entire domain. If you're
using certificates on your workstations, then you're using certificate-based security (IPSec) in some manner.
Do you have AD CS or some other certificate signing authority/PKI in your environment? If not, you would have to pay a public provider (i.e. VeriSign) to provide certificates, and I can assure you that gets very expensive.
If you have Microsoft servers in your environment, you can install and use Certificate Services to provide an internal signing mechanism which can be managed through group policy. You can replace all of the workstation certificates with ones signed by your
internal certificate authority (CA,) and those will pass muster with any auditor provided the appropriate safeguards are put into place elsewhere in your environment.
Least effort for you would be to implement an internal CA, which admittedly isn't a low-effort endeavor, and have the CA assign individual certificates to all of your machines, users, and any other assets you need to protect. If your auditors are requiring
the removal of the self-signed certificates, you might find a way to script the removal of the certificates. In my experience, however, most auditors just want IPSec to be done with certificates that terminate somewhere other than the local workstation (i.e.
an internal CA).