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 guide explains how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for Microsoft 365 (Office 365). The honest answer first: you do not generate a CSR for the Microsoft 365 cloud itself. Microsoft 365 is a hosted SaaS platform, so Microsoft owns and manages the TLS certificates on outlook.office365.com, the *.mail.protection.outlook.com mail endpoints, *.sharepoint.com, and […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) in Microsoft Exchange Server. It covers the current releases (Exchange Server Subscription Edition and Exchange 2019 CU15+) using both PowerShell and the Exchange Admin Center, the PowerShell-only path required on Exchange 2016 (CU23+) and Exchange 2019 CU12 to CU14, and archival steps for […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR on Ubuntu, specifically on an Ubuntu-based Apache server reached over SSH. Ubuntu uses OpenSSL for this, so you run two things in one command: a new private key and the matching CSR (Certificate Signing Request). You can pass the subject details as flags, which keeps the […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR on NGINX. NGINX does not generate Certificate Signing Requests itself: you create the private key and the CSR with OpenSSL on the same server that will host the certificate, then submit the CSR to your Certificate Authority. When the issued certificate comes back, you point NGINX […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) on Windows Server. You can build the request two ways: through the IIS Manager GUI (the classic point-and-click wizard), or with certreq.exe and an INF file from PowerShell. Both keep the private key on the server in […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Debian using the OpenSSL command line. You run a single command over SSH that creates two files at once: a private key that stays on your server, and the CSR you submit to your Certificate Authority (CA). The steps work on Debian […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR in cPanel, the shared hosting control panel used on most Linux web hosts. cPanel creates the CSR and its matching private key together, stores the key safely in the SSL/TLS manager, and gives you a text block to paste into your Certificate Authority’s order form. The […]
This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on CentOS using the OpenSSL command line. You run one command, answer a few prompts about your domain and organization, and OpenSSL writes two files: a CSR you send to the Certificate Authority and a private key that stays on your server. The […]
This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR on Apache using the OpenSSL command line on the same server that runs Apache HTTP 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.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install an SSL certificate on WordPress Multisite. There are two parts: install the certificate at the server level (the type depends on whether your network uses subdirectories, subdomains, or separate domains), then force HTTPS across the whole network from inside WordPress.
