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 a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) is generated for a code signing certificate when you work with OpenSSL, and, just as important, when that approach no longer applies. Since June 1, 2023, the rules for code signing keys changed, so the old software-only OpenSSL workflow is not accepted by Certificate Authorities for […]
The Certificates snap-in in Microsoft Management Console (MMC) can build a PKCS #10 certificate request on a Windows machine without any extra software. This guide covers that wizard screen by screen for a code signing certificate, and it starts with the part most older instructions leave out: the rules for code signing private keys changed […]
The Windows certreq.exe utility builds a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from a plain-text policy file, normally called request.inf. It is the scriptable way to create a request on Windows without clicking through the Certificates snap-in. This guide shows the policy file and the commands, and it starts with the rule that decides whether a certreq […]
Keychain Access is still on every Mac, and its Certificate Assistant still generates certificate signing requests. Whether that request is any use for code signing depends entirely on which certificate you are ordering. For an Apple Developer ID certificate, the one that lets you distribute Mac software outside the Mac App Store, Keychain Access is […]
The keytool utility shipped with the Java Development Kit (JDK) creates a key pair inside a Java keystore and turns it into a CSR (Certificate Signing Request), the encoded block a Certificate Authority (CA) reads to identify you before it issues a certificate. For code signing, what keytool may legitimately be used for changed on […]
A code signing certificate proves who published a piece of software and shows that the code has not been changed since it was signed. To order one, you create a CSR (Certificate Signing Request), the block of encoded text the Certificate Authority (CA) uses to identify you and issue the certificate. Code signing CSRs follow […]
Moving a Joomla site to HTTPS takes three steps: install an SSL certificate on your server, set Force HTTPS in Joomla’s Global Configuration, and add a 301 redirect so old HTTP links follow. The third step has a Joomla-specific catch that trips up most people, and it is covered below before the code. Quick answer: […]
Putting a PrestaShop store on HTTPS takes three steps: install an SSL certificate on your server, switch on two settings in Shop Parameters, and redirect the old HTTP traffic. The middle step catches most people out, because PrestaShop has two SSL settings rather than one and the second stays locked until the first is saved.
Putting an SSL certificate on a WordPress site takes three steps: install the certificate on your server, point WordPress at the HTTPS versions of your URLs, and redirect the old HTTP traffic. Most hosts now handle the first step for you, and since version 5.7 WordPress handles a large part of the second one by […]
If you landed here after searching for ERR_SSL_VERSION_INTERFERENCE, start with the part most guides leave out: Google Chrome does not produce this error anymore, and has not since 2019. The code was retired from the browser, so a current version of Chrome cannot display that message at all. That does not mean the problem behind […]
