Let’s Encrypt the Internet
We’re excited to announce our financial support for Let’s Encrypt, the open, automated and free SSL Certificate Authority (CA) that went into public beta on December 3. With so much room for improvement in the CA space, Let’s Encrypt offers a refreshing, promising vision of encrypting the web.
Let’s Encrypt is an open, automated, and free SSL Certificate Authority
Expensive SSL certificates are holding back Internet security by making it difficult to enable HTTPS by default on all sites. The Federal CIO Council underscores the importance of widespread HTTPS deployment:
By always using HTTPS, web services don’t have to make a subjective judgment call about what [data is] sensitive. This leaves less room for error, and makes deployment simpler and more consistent. These changed expectations improve the security of HTTPS on every website. In other words, protecting less sensitive sites strengthens the protections of more sensitive sites.
We believe Let’s Encrypt will significantly improve HTTPS adoption, ensuring everyone benefits from a more secure Internet. That’s precisely why we’re supporting this initiative with a large (for us) donation and we hope you’ll join us in sponsoring Let’s Encrypt.
Let’s Encrypt should make the usual headaches of generating, installing, and updating SSL certificates a thing of the past. During the beta period, you can get a SSL certificate with a few simple steps; we expect major web hosting providers to soon offer seamless Let’s Encrypt integration. In addition to solving the problem of HTTPS adoption, Let’s Encrypt plans to renew all certificates more frequently than traditional CAs. This practice will flush out inappropriate or expired certificates sooner, which will help minimize the window of opportunity for mistakes or security issues.
Traditional Certificate Authorities will still have their place, but Let’s Encrypt will allow them to focus on focus on more complex customer needs and provide higher assurances of identity and trust where needed. If you are frustrated with your current CA, we’ve had a good experience with DigiCert and recommend them as one of the better CAs in the industry.