IS YOUR ORGANIZATION PREPARED FOR 90-DAY CERTIFICATE LIFETIMES?

In a recent poll we conducted, 84% of respondents said they are not prepared for 90-day certificate lifetimes.

In February 2023, Google® announced plans to reduce the lifetime of publicly trusted certificates to 90 days. While the exact date of implementation has not been announced, we expect it could happen in 2024 if history is any indication of the future. The only way for companies with larger certificate portfolios (more than 50) to cope with such short life cycles is automation. So the question is—are you ready for secure sockets layer (SSL) automation?

If you can't answer that, or the answer is a “No,” read on.

Do you think your organization is prepared for 90-day certificate lifetimes?

AUTOMATED CERTIFICATE MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT (ACME)

This is an open standard protocol that all the major software authors have adopted for SSL automation. There are other protocols available, but ACME (RFC8555) is by far the most popular and supported. Originally published in 2016, the proposed standard was finalized in 2019.

Why is this important? ACME is not backwards compatible indefinitely. Older appliances and servers may not be able to support automation.

FIND OUT WHAT YOU NEED TO DO WITH OUR SSL AUTOMATION READINESS CHECKLIST

Upgrading servers to the latest versions is time consuming and increases risks to the business. It needs to be planned and communicated throughout your organization. Typically, these things can take months (sometimes over a year) to complete depending on the complexity.

It's important to understand what your business needs to do to support automated certificates as soon as possible. You don't want to get into a situation whereby Google implements their new rule of 90-day validity and you're simply not ready.

FOUR TIMES THE WORKLOAD, AND EXPONENTIAL RISK

There are no workarounds for this, and that means you'll need to manually install certificates FOUR TIMES a year, not once. Obviously quadrupling the workload for those teams, but more importantly, increasing the risk of a certificate expiring without your knowledge, leading to disastrous consequences of outages, business disruption, and client dissatisfaction.

If you'd like to request a consultation to find out more about SSL automation or review the current state of your digital certificate portfolio, fill in the form below.

DOWNLOAD SSL AUTOMATION READINESS CHECKLIST

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