Scantide Dashboard manual
Scantide SSL monitoring guide

Monitor certificates, domains and visible website evidence.

This manual explains how to use the Scantide dashboard for SSL certificate monitoring, domain lists, single scans, TLD discovery, status views and practical evidence review. The goal is simple: help you see what exists, what expires soon, what is offline, and what needs attention.

Five-minute setup

Quick start

Use this path when you want useful monitoring quickly without reading the full manual first.

Sign in with your email

Open the dashboard login, enter your email address and use the magic link sent to your inbox. A domain-matching email is recommended when you want email reports for that domain.

Add domains

Either upload a text file with one hostname per line, or use automatic discovery where available. Start with the important names first: main website, mail hostnames, customer portals, API endpoints and brand domains.

Scan SSL and status

Use the dashboard status actions to check certificate expiry, online/offline state, redirects, web titles and visible services. Large lists can take longer, so split very large inventories into practical batches.

Review priority findings

Focus first on expired certificates, certificates expiring soon, unexpected offline domains, unknown hostnames and any important service that appears exposed or mislabelled.

Export and follow up

Use CSV export or report views when you need to share evidence with IT, operations, vendors or management. Scantide is most useful when results turn into clear remediation tasks.

What the dashboard is for

System overview

Scantide dashboard is built for visibility. It helps you collect and organize public-facing domain and certificate evidence, then monitor changes over time.

SSL certificate monitoring

See certificate status, expiry dates, issuer information and whether a hostname is reachable over HTTPS. This helps avoid preventable outages and trust warnings.

Domain and service visibility

Track domains, subdomains, ports, redirects, web titles and headers. These signals help identify forgotten assets, stale systems and confusing ownership.

Infrastructure context

Provider, country, ASN and mail-related details can help explain where a service appears to live and which third parties may be involved.

Responsible scope

Scantide is intended for domains and infrastructure you own, operate, administer, or are authorized to review. It focuses on observable evidence such as DNS, TLS, HTTP responses, certificates and public service signals. It is not positioned as an exploitation or brute-force tool.

Access and reports

Email login and validation

The dashboard uses email-based login to avoid password handling and to keep access simple.

Magic-link login

Enter your email address, receive a secure link, and click the link to open the dashboard. This keeps the sign-in flow lightweight and avoids storing a reusable password for the dashboard.

  • Use a real mailbox you can access.
  • Check spam filtering if the email does not arrive.
  • Do not forward magic links to users who should not access the dashboard.

Domain validation for email reports

For automated reporting, a domain-matching address is usually best. For example, admin@example.com is more appropriate for reporting on example.com than a generic public mailbox.

  • On-screen scans can work without report validation.
  • Email reports should go to a relevant owner or operations mailbox.
  • Use shared operational mailboxes carefully and review access.
Domain inventory

File upload and domain management

Use uploads when you already know which domains should be monitored.

Recommended file format

Use a plain text file with one domain or hostname per line. Keep the list clean and avoid comments, full URLs, paths or mixed notes unless the importer explicitly supports them.

example.com
www.example.com
mail.example.com
portal.example.com
api.example.com

Practical upload advice

  • Start with important production systems before adding low-priority names.
  • Separate unrelated customers, brands or environments into separate files where possible.
  • Use clear descriptions so exported reports are understandable later.
  • Review duplicates and old domains before treating the result as an authoritative inventory.
Daily workflow

Dashboard actions and features

The dashboard turns domain lists into status information that can be reviewed, exported and acted on.

Auto query

Discovers visible hostnames and useful domain evidence where available. Best as a quick starting point.

Upload file

Adds your own known hostnames for monitoring and status review.

Scan SSL

Checks certificate availability, validity and expiry details for your monitored names.

Export CSV

Creates a portable evidence file for follow-up, reporting or internal ticketing.

Brand visibility

TLD discovery and brand-domain checks

TLD scanning helps find domains that use your brand name across different extensions. It is useful for inventory cleanup, brand monitoring and spotting forgotten registrations.

What TLD discovery can show

  • Registered brand domains across common top-level domains.
  • Unexpected variants that may need ownership review.
  • Old domains that still resolve or expose services.
  • Domains that should be added to certificate monitoring.

What it does not prove

A discovered domain is not automatically malicious and not automatically owned by you. Treat TLD results as leads that need review. Check registration, DNS, content, redirects and business ownership before escalating.

One-off analysis

SSL and domain scanner

Use the single scanner when you want to quickly inspect one public domain without adding it to a larger monitoring list.

TLS and certificates

Shows certificate subject, issuer, expiry and basic HTTPS availability.

Headers and redirects

Reviews visible HTTP responses, redirects, web titles and selected security headers.

DNS and services

Captures basic DNS, mail and public service signals where available.

Results review

Status views and ViewTLD dashboard

Status pages help you move from raw scan results to decisions: renew, investigate, clean up, ignore, or add to monitoring.

Status interface

The status view groups hostnames and their scan state. Use it to identify expired certificates, expiring certificates, offline hosts, missing data and domains that need a new scan.

  • Sort by expiry date when planning renewals.
  • Filter or export when working with large inventories.
  • Review titles and redirects to identify ownership or purpose.

ViewTLD dashboard

The ViewTLD-style dashboard is useful for exploring brand and TLD results with more detail. It helps connect discovered names with certificate, host, location and availability signals.

  • Useful for brand reviews.
  • Useful for abandoned-domain cleanup.
  • Useful when consolidating domain inventories.
How to read results

Status indicators and priority

Treat indicators as triage labels. They help you decide what to check first, but they do not replace ownership review or operational context.

Valid
Certificate appears healthy.

Usually means the certificate is present and not close to expiry. Still review important systems periodically.

Expiring
Renewal should be planned.

Certificates that expire soon should be renewed before users, integrations or monitoring systems start seeing trust errors.

Expired
Needs urgent review.

An expired certificate can break customer trust, APIs, mail flows, integrations and automation.

Offline
Could be expected or could be stale.

Offline can mean decommissioned, blocked, DNS-only, temporary downtime, firewall restrictions or scan timeout. Confirm before deleting records.

Unknown
Not enough evidence yet.

Unknown results usually need a rescan, DNS check or manual review. Do not assume they are safe or unsafe.

Plain-language value

Why this matters

The dashboard is not only for security specialists. It also helps operations, management and support teams understand the visible state of public services.

For users

Expired certificates and confusing redirects can make a service look untrustworthy, even when the underlying company is legitimate.

For operations

Forgotten domains, stale DNS and unknown exposed services create noise and can become outages or ownership confusion later.

For governance

Provider, country and mail signals can support vendor reviews, policy checks and data-handling discussions.

Common issues

Troubleshooting

Most issues come down to email delivery, DNS, large batches, firewall behavior or unclear domain ownership.

Login email does not arrive

  • Check spam and mail filtering.
  • Confirm the address was spelled correctly.
  • Try a domain mailbox rather than a forwarding alias.
  • Ask your mail administrator whether the message was quarantined.

Scan takes a long time

  • Large inventories take longer because each hostname needs DNS and network checks.
  • Split very large lists into smaller batches.
  • Expect TLD discovery to take longer than a single certificate check.
  • Temporary remote timeouts are normal on the public internet.

Domain appears offline

  • Check spelling and DNS records.
  • Confirm the service should actually answer publicly.
  • Review whether a firewall, CDN or WAF blocks some requests.
  • Do not remove a hostname only because one scan says offline.

Certificate data looks wrong

  • Rescan after a renewal or DNS change.
  • Check whether the hostname redirects to another host.
  • Confirm SNI behavior if multiple sites share the same IP.
  • Compare with browser certificate details for critical names.
Operational advice

Best practices

Scantide is most useful when the evidence feeds a repeatable workflow.

PracticeWhy it helpsSuggested rhythm
Keep a clean domain inventoryReduces forgotten systems and unclear ownership.Review monthly or after major changes.
Watch certificate expiryPrevents avoidable trust warnings and outages.Review weekly for important services.
Export evidence before changesMakes it easier to compare before and after remediation.Before renewals, migrations and cleanup.
Confirm unknown domainsA discovered domain may be old, third-party, unrelated or business-critical.During every brand/TLD review.
Document ownershipScan results become actionable only when someone owns the fix.Continuously.
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Scantide prove that a website is safe or unsafe?

No. Scantide provides evidence and indicators. A clean-looking result is not a guarantee of safety, and a warning does not automatically mean malicious behavior. Use the result as input for review.

Can I scan domains I do not own?

Use Scantide for domains and infrastructure you own, operate, administer, or have permission to review. The tool is designed for visibility and monitoring, not unauthorized testing.

Why does Scantide check TLDs?

Brand names often exist across many domain extensions. TLD checks can reveal forgotten registrations, related domains, or names that should be reviewed for ownership and risk.

What should I fix first?

Start with expired certificates, important certificates expiring soon, critical systems that are unexpectedly offline, and domains that appear to be active but have unclear ownership.

Is this the same as Scantide Observe or Scantide Auditor?

No. The dashboard is for domain and certificate monitoring. Scantide Observe focuses on browser/mobile website evidence, while Scantide Auditor focuses more on internal or authorized network visibility.

Related Scantide tools

Use the dashboard together with the other Scantide tools when you need broader visibility across browser behavior, mobile checks and internal network auditing.

Scantide product map

Which Scantide tool should I use?

Scantide is split into focused tools so the right audience gets the right kind of evidence quickly. Use Observe for live website behavior, Online for public domain checks, Dashboard for monitoring, and Auditor when you need authorized internal network visibility.

Observe browser extension

For Chrome, Edge, Brave and Firefox. Shows trackers, cookies, scripts, security headers, forms, contacted hosts and browser-visible website risk while you browse.

Open Observe guide

Observe Mobile

For Android users who want to share a URL from a browser or app and understand website privacy, scripts, trackers, infrastructure and jurisdiction context on mobile.

Open Observe Mobile

Scantide Online

For quick public-domain checks. Reviews visible TLS, DNS, headers, redirects, services, provider and jurisdiction signals for a website or domain.

Run single scan

Dashboard monitoring

For teams that need recurring certificate and domain visibility, status views, uploaded domain lists, expiry warnings and evidence history.

Open dashboard login

Auditor PowerShell

For Windows admins reviewing authorized internal networks. Finds reachable hosts, visible services, web responses, TLS clues and CMDB gaps in clear HTML reports.

Open PowerShell Auditor

Auditor for Android

For mobile field checks and quick local network visibility. Useful for Wi-Fi review, nearby network context and on-site authorized infrastructure checks.

Open Android Auditor
Need help choosing or setting this up? Use the main manual or contact Scantide.