Having a root process with write-privileges to /etc on production machines and also able to communicate over the Internet definitely is a security risk.
To mitigate that you end-up building a series of privilege-restricted jobs flowing from the DMZ back into the internal network. And maintaining that might be more complicated than just manually renewing, depending upon the processes and architecture of the company.
To mitigate that you end-up building a series of privilege-restricted jobs flowing from the DMZ back into the internal network. And maintaining that might be more complicated than just manually renewing, depending upon the processes and architecture of the company.