Non-profit, free certificate authority Let's Encrypt has announced some exciting news. Let's Encrypt CEO Josh Aas as they approach their 10th anniversary in 2025 he said:
“Internally things have changed dramatically from what they looked like ten years ago, but externally our service hasn't changed much since its launch. That's because the vision we had for how to do our job better remains as strong today as ever: Free 90-day TLS certificates through an automated API. More than 500.000.000 websites take advantage of this offer today, and the vast majority of the web is encrypted.
Our offering won't change radically next year, but we will introduce a new offering that will be a big change from anything we've done in the past – short-lived certificates.
Specifically, certificates with a lifespan of six days. This is a big security upgrade for the TLS ecosystem because it minimizes exposure time during a breach.
Because we've done so much to encourage automation over the past decade, most of our subscribers won't need to do much to switch to shorter-lived certificates. We, on the other hand, should consider the possibility of having to issue 20 times more certificates than we issue now. Sometime in the next decade we may need to be ready to issue 100.000.000 certificates per day. This seems crazy to me today, but issuing 5.000.000 certificates a day seemed crazy to me ten years ago…”
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
