A certificate acquiring method and device, where the method includes receiving a certificate application representation message sent by a newly installed virtualized network function component (VNFC) instance, sending a certificate request message to a certification authority, and acquiring a certificate issued by the certification authority. In this way, the newly installed VNFC instance does not need to use a current manner for a virtualized network function (VNF) to acquire a certificate, which effectively avoids a problem of a cumbersome and more complex process caused when the newly installed VNFC instance acquires a certificate.