Announcement & Articles

Introducing the Multi-year Plan to simplify SSL Certificate Management

Two years of validity period on TLS Certificates minimized to one year.

Background:

A few years ago, the validation period of TLS certificates was three years, and it was knocked down to two years. Now again, Apple has announced that Lifetime of TLS certificate has reduced to one year.

At the CA/Browser (CA/B) Forum in Slovakia, Bratislava, Apple announcement states starting from September 2020, recently issued TLS certificates are no longer valid for 398 days. It happened by following a long history of the CA/B Forum Community trying to reduce the lifetime of certificates and improve security while balancing the business requirements in transitioning to shorter validity certificates.

Why does apple announce to uphold a shorter lifetime of Certificates?

Representatives from Apple said it was to Protect Users. As we know before Forum proposals that longer certificate lifetimes end up being trying in replacing certificates in many security incidents, certificates with fewer lifetimes will enhance the security as they reduce the window of exposure if a TLS certificate is compromised. They additionally help remediate regular operations in organizations by ensuring annual updates to identity including company names, addresses, and active domains. You can read the article on this subject that has released by Apple.

What’re the Impacts?

  • Any pending 2-year certificates that have not been issued by August 27 will follow the new rules.
  • The future certificate can only have a maximum of 397 days, and the balance of time can be claimed by issuing a new certificate for the remaining duration.
  • Any 2-year certificates issued by August 27 will remain valid until expiration without any modification or replacement.
  • Any reissues made after August 27, 2020, will be reduced to one year.

Muli year

As certificate validity periods continue to decrease, automation will be a must for organizations’ ability to manage certificate shorter lifetimes. To help customers utilize the benefits of shorter certificate lifetimes and make certificate management even more manageable, Digicert is offering a multi-year plan coupled with automation tools.

DigiCert Announces New Multi-year Plan in DigiCert CertCentral® to Help Customers Simplify TLS Certificate Management Ahead of 1-Year Lifetime Requirements

What is a multi-year plan?

A multi-year plan simplifies the process while purchasing or renewing the certificates and decreases burdens by avoiding annual certificate purchases. This time and cost-effective plan help enhance customer security, reduce the certificate outages with huge discounts, and continue the offers up to six years of certificate validity.

How does it Work?

When a customer purchases a Multi-year Plan TLS/SSL certificate, they will receive the initial certificate valid for one year, and entitlement to unlimited certificate reissues during the six years. Acmetek will revalidate customer organizations and domains annually throughout the lifetime of the Multi-year Plan (up to 6 years).

Acmetek Multi Year Plan

You will have complete flexibility in their certificate lifetime, including changing domain names, organization name, certificate lifetime, adding multiple domains, and upgrading the products.

Here are the benefits of switching to a multiyear SSL/TLS Certificate plan

Commercial Benefits

  • Buy a Five-year multiyear SSL/TLS certificate Plan and get the sixth year free.
  • Multi-Year TLS/SSL certificate plan avoids annual certificate purchases and minimizes administrative burdens.
  • Purchasing a multi-year plan will lock in the discounted pricing until the certificate lifetime (applicable for two, three, and four years certificates).

Technical Benefits

  • Obtain complete flexibility throughout the certificate lifetime. Change Domain and organization names, and add multiple domains (SAN).
  • Upgrade the SSL/TLS certificate during the certificate lifetime by paying on a pro-rata basis.
  • One of the remarkable benefits of shortened certificate lifetime is the minimized risk of weak keys and compromised certificates.
  • Unlimited Certificate reissues during the order period.
  • Automation and discovery across multiple servers for larger-scale networks.
  • Utilize automated certificate installation throughout the certificate lifetime that is available only on the DigiCert® Cert Central Portal.

Along with these, you can take advantage of automation for simpler certificate management. With the Automation tool, you can simplify renewal processes and discounted pricing for up to six years.

  • Supports new orders for almost any ACME client running on the customer server
  • Automation and discovery across multiple servers for larger-scale networks
  • The ability to utilize sensors for easy to manage, scalable ACME deployments
  • Seamless integration with OEM solutions such as F5, Citrix, NetScaler, A10 as well as popular server orchestration and management platforms
  • Customizable automation through APIs to integrate DigiCert tools and your system
  • Auto-renew configuration via CertCentral console

OFFER:

Buy FIVE years multi-year SSL/TLS certificate plan and get the Sixth year FREE.

To continue enjoying these benefits after the six years, you can extend your SSL/TLS coverage by renewing your Multi-year Plan before it expires. To know more information about the Multi-year SSL/TLS certificate plan, click here.

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