The article explores how to efficiently manage SSL certificates in Spring Boot applications by leveraging HashiCorp Vault's PKI secrets engine and Vault Agent for SSL hot reload. It outlines a method to automate certificate renewal without restarting the application, maintaining code independence from Vault. The process involves setting up a PKI secrets engine in Vault to generate dynamic X.509 certificates, deploying Vault Agent to handle authentication and write secrets to files, and configuring Spring Boot to reference these files for SSL hot reloads. This approach helps handle certificate expiration dynamically, avoiding manual configurations and downtime, and the article provides a detailed example of this implementation. Additional resources and tutorials for integrating HashiCorp Vault with Spring applications are also referenced.