Avoiding SSL certificate outages is critical for businesses. Learn how to prevent expired SSL certificates and other errors as well as how to renew certificates.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are cryptographic protocols designed to provide a secure communication channel between clients and servers over the internet. SSL is the older encryption protocol whereas TLS is the relatively newer version. The intention behind having an SSL/TLS certificate is not just to provide authentication but also to establish the identity of the remote server with which the client browser communicates.
An SSL certificate error occurs when a web browser can't verify the certificate installed on a site. Rather than connect the requestor, the browser will display an error message warning that the site may be insecure. This often occurs when a certificate has expired. According to industry standards, SSL certificates cannot have a lifespan longer than 398 days. That means that every website needs to renew or replace its SSL certificate at least once every two years.
Note that SSL/TLS certificates are offered with three levels of validation:
Web server downtime is costly. According to Information Technology Intelligence Consulting's 11th annual Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, over 98% of large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees say that on average, a single hour of downtime per year costs their company over $100,000. That's $1,667 per minute of downtime for a single server, growing to $16,670 per minute when downtime affects 10 servers and critical business applications or data assets.
Unidentified, expired SSL certificates result in multiple process interruptions, ranging from a simple error message on a screen to an abrupt termination of service due to a protocol error. Additional causes of SSL certificate problems and outages include:
AA web server without an SSL certificate is vulnerable to being hacked, exposing visitors and customers to a higher risk of having their data stolen. Check out Sectigo’s Root Causes podcast for more discussions on why certificates expire in the first place.
Without encryption provided by an SSL certificate, your site — and the data it collects — is open to a data breach or cyber threat. Additionally:
The risks of an expired certificate makes it essential for a business to consider how they manage their certificates.
Failure to renew or replace an expired SSL/TLS certificate means that any communication to that machine will cease to work. Knowing where each certificate is installed, who controls access to that machine, and when the certificate will expire is essential to business continuity.
Organizations with distributed certificate creation and management teams, such as web hosting providers, can quickly find themselves dealing with hundreds of thousands of certificates to manage, with more being created daily. Lack of centralized ownership, automation, and more critically, a lack of organizational visibility, sets the stage for human error and unidentified SSL certificate errors.
Even with the help of email notifications for certificate expiration dates, enterprises who manually manage certificates and their renewals are at risk of them expiring due to gaps in ownership, caused by human error, vacation, or staff turnaround. When a breach occurs in this environment and time is of the essence, troubleshooting to mitigate widespread risk can be practically impossible.
A commitment to proactive monitoring and management is a critical step toward preventing SSL certificate outages.
There's no better time to discover, control, and automate the lifecycle of all digital certificates in your environment than now. That starts with picking the right Certificate Authority.
The simple truth is the right CA partner offloads a range of routine tasks critical to the business that most IT teams simply don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to perform. When all the other benefits of trusted certificates are added along with the services provided by a CA, the return on that investment compounds.
Sectigo provides certificate automation solutions that allow enterprises to be agile and efficient while maintaining control of all the security certificates in their environment. Sectigo supports automated installation, revocation, and renewal of SSL/TLS and non-SSL certificates via industry-leading protocols, APIs, and third-party integrations. All Sectigo TLS certificates enable 256-bit encryption, the strongest encryption available for web connections.
With Sectigo Certificate Manager (SCM), organizations can deploy an automated certificate management environment with certificate discovery – in-depth scanning that uncovers and monitors any digital certificates installed across an entire environment regardless of the issuing Certificate Authority (CA). For example, you can drop a Sectigo Proxy in your Microsoft Windows Active Directory server and start issuing both public and private certificates immediately.
Sectigo offers several automation capabilities, including support of the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol. This standard automates certificate lifecycle management communications between CAs and a company’s web servers, email systems, user devices, apps, and any other place Public Key Infrastructure certificates (PKI) are used. SCM ACME support ensures that certificates are correctly configured and implemented without any human intervention needed. This automated approach not only helps reduce risk but allows IT departments to control operational costs and scale certificate issuance quickly.
With more than 100 million certificates issued and the widest selection of options for any sized website, Sectigo is the best choice for your SSL needs.
Use the following steps to renew your Sectigo SSL certificate:
Step 1: If you are an existing customer, log in to your account. If your certificate will expire within 90 days, you will see a renewal option next to the SSL certificate options. If you are a new customer, after selecting the right SSL certificate, instead of clicking on “Add to Cart” click on “Renew Now.”
Step 2: Fill out the form and make your payment.
Step 3: Generate the Certificate Signing Request (CSR).
Step 4: Send the CSR code (public keys) to Sectigo as your certificate authority.
Step 5: Complete the validation and installation processes.
Ensure your SSL certificates are up to date - explore Sectigo’s SSL / TLS certificates or our Enterprise Certificate Manager today.