At the CA/Browser (CA/B) Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia, this week, Apple announced that beginning Sept. 1, newly issued publicly trusted TLS certificates are valid for no longer than 398 days. This followed a long history of the CA/B Forum community working to reduce certificate lifetimes and improve security while balancing the needs of business owners in transitioning to shorter validity certificates.
Why did Apple unilaterally decide to enforce a shorter certificate lifetime? Their spokesperson said it was to “protect users.” We know from prior CA/B Forum discussions that longer certificate lifetimes proved to be challenging in replacing certificates, in the case of a major security incident. Apple clearly wants to avoid an ecosystem that cannot quickly respond to major certificate-related threats. Short-lived certificates improve security because they reduce the window of exposure if a TLS certificate is compromised. They also help remediate normal operational churn within organizations by ensuring yearly updates to identity such as company names, addresses, and active domains. As with any improvement, shortening of lifetimes should be balanced against the hardship required of certificate users to implement these changes.
What does this mean for certificate users? For your website to be trusted by Safari, you will no longer be able to issue publicly trusted TLS certificates with validities longer than 398 days after Aug. 30, 2020. Any certificates issued before Sept. 1, 2020, will still be valid, regardless of the validity period (up to 825 days). Certificates that are not publicly trusted can still be recognized, up to a maximum validity of 825 days.
DigiCert's response
DigiCert agrees that shorter lifetimes help enhance the security of the ecosystem and have the tools necessary to help our customers automate the certificate lifecycle process. They support short-lived certificates, with lifetimes as short as a few hours for customers with advanced automation capabilities. Additionally, the CertCentral platform includes the ability to schedule and automate the replacement of EV, OV and DV certificates. Using CertCentral admins may take advantage of continuous discovery, renewal notices, thorough API integration and documentation, as well as support for orchestration layers. CertCentral also allows for multi-year purchases to smooth planning and 24/7 global support enabling the best experience in the industry.
As certificate validity periods continue to decrease, automation will be a must for organizations’ ability to manage shorter lifetimes. DigiCert is prepared with the industry’s most advanced and reliable tools to help our customers take the necessary steps toward greater use of automation. GoGetSSL would implement CertCentral API till 20th March 2020.
Sectigo's response
Sectigo understands the benefits of and supports shorter certificate lifecycles. However, they also know that the currently imposed two-year limitation has already impacted SSL resellers as well as business by causing user friction, reducing Average Sales Prices (ASPs), and negatively affecting overall revenue. This new industry standard will further impact revenue for partners.
Sectigo anticipated this change and has introduced solutions to help partners maintain and even increase ASPs as well as retain the 30%+ annual revenue that is at risk due to shortened certificate lifetimes.
Website owners need to prepare
CAs will have to ensure they only issue one-year certificates after Sept. 1. This is because Apple will treat any certificates issued from roots in their platform valid for more than 398 days as a “policy violation,” meaning CAs could face disciplinary action from Apple. Such action could be as minor as a warning or as significant as CA distrust. CAs use root certificates common to all browsers to issue TLS certificates. If they didn’t, users would experience errors when accessing websites from different browsers.
Website owners that currently use two-year website certificates will only be able to obtain one-year certificates as of Sept. 1. Any certificates that are currently valid for two years and issued before Sept. 1 will remain valid.