The cybersecurity crowd loves to pitch certificate automation as some sleek, forward-thinking upgrade for the modern web. But let’s be real: we didn’t get here because everyone suddenly became proactive. We got here because the industry kept messing up. Automation isn’t a reward for good behavior; it’s an intervention. For years,we’ve seen a spectacular parade […]
Certificate automation is a solved problem. The tools exist, the CAs support them, and most IT teams understand the risk of going manual. Yet 38% of organizations still manage certificates with spreadsheets, and 70% admit they don’t have the staff to keep up. The gap between what’s available and what’s adopted isn’t a technical story. […]
The SSL industry already has one countdown on the wall. By 2029, the old annual renewal rhythm will be gone. Certificates will expire faster, automation will be mandatory, and businesses still running on calendar reminders will fall behind. That challenge, at least, is legible. The harder problem is not about time. It’s about visibility. Post-quantum […]
On May 8, 2026, Let’s Encrypt temporarily stopped issuing certificates after detecting an internal error in its certificate system. Existing certificates remained valid, but new requests and automated renewals were affected during the interruption. Service was later restored after Let’s Encrypt changed the affected issuance path. What Happened Inside Let’s Encrypt? The interruption traced back […]
If SSL certificates were only about encryption, the paid market should have collapsed by now. Basic HTTPS is everywhere. Free DV certificates protect ordinary websites. Hosting panels turn SSL into a checkbox. Browsers no longer treat encrypted pages as special; they flag unencrypted ones as broken. Yet paid SSL still exists. The market thrives because […]
Picking a code signing certificate provider is harder than it should be. Four publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities cover almost every legitimate buying scenario: Sectigo, Comodo, DigiCert, and GoGetSSL. At first glance they all look similar. They issue the same X.509 certificates, follow the same CA/Browser Forum rules, and ship hardware tokens that meet the same FIPS […]
SSL certificate validity is changing, and the shift has already started. The industry is moving away from long-lived certificates and toward much shorter lifetimes, forcing a different approach to how you manage SSL/TLS. This is not a minor update. Reduced SSL validity increases the frequency at which you issue certificates, validate domains, and handle renewals. […]
SSL certificates are often treated as a set-and-forget layer of infrastructure. Once installed, browsers stay quiet, and encryption fades into the background. From a support perspective, reality looks very different. Behind routine installations sits a steady flow of tickets where certificates are technically valid, correctly deployed, and still failing in ways that aren’t immediately visible. […]
You’ve just received your SSL certificate files and notice two extensions: .crt and .cer. Your server expects one, your certificate authority (CA) sent the other. Before you start troubleshooting, here’s the short answer: both file extensions hold the same X.509 certificate data, and the difference is mostly a naming convention. But “mostly” is doing some […]
At SSL Dragon, we work with SSL certificates across a wide range of environments, from simple single-domain sites to modern stacks where TLS is deliberately spread across multiple layers. Over time, that range makes one thing clear: TLS itself is stable, but the way it’s understood hasn’t kept pace with its evolution. Today, HTTPS commonly […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR for a Node.js application. Node.js has no built-in CSR generation tool, so you create the private key and the Certificate Signing Request with OpenSSL on the machine that will run Node, submit the CSR to your Certificate Authority, and then load the issued certificate into your […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on macOS. It covers the two methods that work on every current macOS version: the Keychain Access Certificate Assistant wizard (a built-in graphical tool, no extra software needed), and the openssl command line in Terminal. It also keeps the legacy macOS Server (Server.app) […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on JBoss EAP and WildFly using the Java keytool utility. The flow is two commands: first keytool -genkeypair creates a keystore and a private key under a chosen alias, then keytool -certreq exports the matching CSR with the Subject Alternative Names the CA […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for GlassFish (now Eclipse GlassFish) using the Java keytool utility. GlassFish is unusual in one helpful way: a fresh install already ships with a keystore (keystore.p12 on Eclipse GlassFish 7.1 and newer, or keystore.jks on older builds) and a default certificate entry under […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for Apache Tomcat using the Java keytool utility. The flow is two commands: first keytool -genkeypair creates a keystore and a private key under a chosen alias, then keytool -certreq exports the matching CSR. The same alias is reused later when you import […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on an SAP NetWeaver Application Server (ABAP). On SAP you do not create the request from a config file or with a one-off OpenSSL command. Instead you work from a PSE (Personal Security Environment): in Trust Manager (transaction STRUST) you select or create […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR on LiteSpeed using the OpenSSL command line. LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS Enterprise) and OpenLiteSpeed do not have a built-in CSR wizard: their WebAdmin consoles expect file paths to an existing private key and certificate. You generate both files with OpenSSL on the LiteSpeed host, submit the […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR on lighttpd using the OpenSSL command line on the same server that runs the lighttpd web server. You will create two files in one command: a new private key and the matching CSR (Certificate Signing Request) that you submit to your Certificate Authority.
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on IBM HTTP Server (IHS), and how to do the same job on HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino). IBM HTTP Server stores keys and certificates in a CMS key database (a .kdb file plus a .sth stash), which you manage with the IKEYMAN […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux using the OpenSSL command line. The process produces two files: It covers two approaches: a single-command method for modern OpenSSL, and a config-file method for older OpenSSL versions that do not support inline extensions. Both produce a SAN-compliant […]
