Changes in the SSL industry that may affect your certificates.
November 2026
Bleeping Computer reports a data breach at Digicert. DigiCert warns it suffered a data breach after a server migration mistakenly exposed an internal business system to the internet, allowing unauthorized access to custo…
March 2026 Important
SSL certificates will be limited to a maximum validity of 200 days, regardless of the original order. Existing certificates will remain valid until their expiration. For any reissues, new certificates will also be issued…
March 2026 Important
Beginning in March 2026, SSL/TLS certificates will gradually move from the current 398-day validity period to a significantly shorter 47-day lifespan by 2029. On April 11, 2025, the CA/Browser Forum approved Ballot SC-08…
March 2022
From today, 3rd March 2022, Sectigo have blocked all orders from Russia and Belarus. This is for new orders, renewals and re-issues for any .ru, .by, .su and .рф TLDs and any organization which has Russia or Belarus as t…
May 2020
The Sectigo AddTrust External CA Root certificate expired on 30th May 2020. Sectigo had assured everyone that no issues will arise from this. However, some TLS clients which are incapable of building an alternative certi…
February 2020
In January 2015, we announced the upcoming end of the 4 and 5-year certificates from April 2015 onwards. In April 2017, we announced the upcoming end of the 3-year certificates from February 2018 onwards. However, it now…
January 2019
On 17th January 2019, DigiCert Inc acquired QuoVadis - an EU and Swiss TSP, specialising in qualified digital certificates and related services for Europe, as well as enterprise managed PKI services. DigiCert will contin…
December 2018
Comodo CA has re-branded and now is known as Sectigo. With over 20 years of experience, Comodo has issued over 100 million certificates and works with over 700,000 businesses worldwide. They have become the largest comme…
August 2018
The Register reports TLS 1.3 has been approved: "An overhaul of a critical internet security protocol has been completed, with TLS 1.3 becoming an official standard late last week."
May 2018
A second round of SSL certificate re-issues for RapidSSL and GeoTrust certificates will take place during May 2018 to combat Google's distrust in their Chrome browser. As was the case in January, all affected orders will…
February 2018
As first reported in April 2017, CAs will no longer be able to issue 3 year SSL certificates after 1st March 2018. The CA/B Forum is enforcing this change to all CAs in order to improve security, as longer validity SSL c…
January 2018
As previously reported, Google plans to distrust some Symantec SSL certificates in their Chrome browser. This includes some certificates issued by its subsidiaries, RapidSSL and GeoTrust. During mid to late January 2018,…
November 2017
On 31st October 2017, DigiCert Inc acquired Symantec Corporation - Symantec’s Website Security and PKI business. All certificates from their main brand, Symantec, as well as all certificates from their sub-brands (Thawte…
September 2017
From 7th September 2017, all CAs are now required to check the domain name's DNS for a CAA record prior to issuing any SSL certificates for that domain. If you have configured CAA records in your domain name's DNS, only…
August 2017
At the beginning of August 2017, DigiCert announced its agreement to acquire Symantec's website security business, including the SSL/TLS and the IoT business. DigiCert announced this very swiftly as they are hoping "that…
July 2017
Google are to distrust all Symantec SSL certificates (issued before 1st June 2016) in their Chrome browser, from 8th August 2017. In March 2017, Google and Mozilla found Symantec had mis-issued 127 SSL certificates (agai…
July 2017
All previous orders for Comodo Single Domain SSL certificates for www. have secured the base domain (non-www.), until now. Like the majority of CAs, Comodo gave this for free, by adding it to the SAN. For example: a prev…
May 2017
Comodo experienced technical issues resulting in loss of all services for 20 hours between 10th and 11th May 2017. This unfortunately resulted in the loss of all orders from 3rd May to 11th May 2017. Comodo were able to…
April 2017
A recent change to the CA/B Forum Baseline Requirement will soon prevent issuance of 3 year SSL certificates. From 1st March 2018, the maximum validity period will be 27 months for all SSL Certificates. This 27 months li…
May 2016
All major web browser manufacturers will begin disabling support for SHA-1 certificates from publicly-trusted certificate authorities in early 2017. If your SSL certificate is using SHA-1 then you will need a re-issue to…
May 2016
Google has again made minor updates to its search algorithm and now all websites using SSL will benefit. If you have a valid SSL certificate installed, this will increase your Google SEO and in return you will gain more…
November 2015
A recent change to the CA/B Forum Baseline Requirement now prevents issuance of SSL certificates containing local hostnames. From 1st November 2015, all Common Names and SANs fields must contain FQDNs If your server uses…
January 2015
A recent change to the CA/B Forum Baseline Requirement will soon prevent issuance of 4 and 5 year SSL certificates. From 1st April 2015, the maximum validity period will be 39 months for all SSL Certificates. This 39 mon…
September 2014
Most SSL certificates issued today are created with a hash algorithm called SHA-1, which is now almost 20 years old. With advances in hardware and therefore computing power, the feasibility of successful collision attack…
November 2013
Comodo have announced the addition of their Multi-Domain Wildcard SSL. This is an industry first, for a CA to issue a multi-domain SSL with wildcard capabilities. Aimed at customers with many domains and sub-domains to s…
June 2013
Symantec have announced the addition of a new Wildcard SSL certificate to their range of highest level 256-bit encryption Symantec SSL certificates. This is the most expensive SSL certificate we are aware of, so perhaps…
September 2011
A security breach at DigiNotar (https://www.diginotar.nl — now a dead link) has resulted in the issuance of more than 500 fraudulent SSL certificates. All major web browsers have since blacklisted all DigiNotar issued ce…
