The present invention relates to the communications field and discloses a certificate management method, a device, and a system, so as to resolve a problem that communication security of a virtual network system is degraded because after a VNF instance is terminated in the virtual network system, a private key corresponding to a certificate of the VNF instance may be illegally obtained by an attacker to forge an identity of the VNF instance. A specific solution is: obtaining, by a first device, a certificate identifier of a first instance; and updating certificate status information of the first instance to a revocation state according to the certificate identifier of the first instance, or sending, by the first device, a first request message to a second device, where the first request message is used to request to revoke a certificate of the first instance. The present invention is used for certificate management.