Public-key infrastructure in network management

A method of granting a public-key certificate to a managed node in an IT network is provided. A request from the managed node to grant the certificate is received at a certification server. It is ascertained whether an initialization-to-request time interval between an initialization time of the managed node and a request time assigned to the request is within a maximum time interval for automatic certificate grant. The requested certificate is automatically granted if the initialization-to-request time interval is within the maximum time interval.