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Author: Dionisie Gitlan

I've been writing for SSL Dragon for over 10 years, focusing entirely on SSL certificates and digital security. My job is to take complex cybersecurity topics and strip away the jargon, making sure you get the clear, practical information you need to keep your website safe.

Articles by Dionisie Gitlan

10 SSL Incidents That Prove Certificate Automation Was Inevitable

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 […]

Why Certificate Automation Still Has Low Adoption

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. […]

Why the Post-Quantum Certificate Challenge Is Bigger Than Shorter Validity

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 […]

Let’s Encrypt Pauses Certificate Issuance After Internal Error

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 […]

Why The SSL Market Is No Longer Selling Encryption

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 […]

Best Code Signing Certificate Providers in 2026

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 […]

From 398 Days to 47: What the New SSL Certificate Lifetimes Mean

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. […]

Behind the Tickets: What Really Makes SSL Errors Difficult to Debug

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. […]

CRT vs CER File Extensions Explained

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 […]

Why Multi-Certificate Environments Break TLS Mental Models

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 […]

Tutorials by Dionisie Gitlan

How to Generate a CSR on Proxmox

This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Proxmox VE. Because Proxmox Virtual Environment is built on Debian, you create the CSR from the command line over SSH using the OpenSSL utility, which ships pre-installed on every node. The process is the same on Proxmox VE 8.x and the newer […]

How to Generate a CSR on Postfix

This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Postfix using the OpenSSL command line. Postfix itself does not generate keys or CSRs; it consumes the files OpenSSL produces and references them from /etc/postfix/main.cf. You run a single command that creates two files at once: a private key that stays on […]

How to Generate a CSR on Kerio Connect

This guide walks you through how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Kerio Connect, the mail server now sold as GFI Kerio Connect since GFI Software acquired Kerio Technologies in 2017. The product name on the wire and inside the admin console is still Kerio Connect, so the menu paths below match what […]

How to Generate a CSR on Courier IMAP Server

This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on a Courier IMAP server with OpenSSL. The certificate you obtain from this CSR secures the TLS connections your mail clients use for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP, so credentials and messages travel encrypted between the client and your server.

How to Generate a CSR on a Nutanix Cluster

This guide shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for a Nutanix cluster, the request you send to your Certificate Authority to get a trusted SSL/TLS certificate for Prism Element (single-cluster console) and Prism Central (multi-cluster console). Prism does not include a built-in CSR wizard, so you generate the request and the […]

How to Generate a CSR on Heroku

This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for Heroku using OpenSSL and how to upload the issued certificate with the Heroku CLI. Heroku has no built-in CSR form on the platform itself, so the request and the matching private key are generated off-platform (on your local Linux, macOS, or Windows […]

How to Generate a CSR on Google Cloud Platform

This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for Google Cloud Platform using OpenSSL, then how to upload the signed certificate to the right Google Cloud service. Google Cloud has no built-in form that creates a CSR for you, so the request and the matching private key are generated with OpenSSL, […]

How to Generate a CSR on Google App Engine

This tutorial explains how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for Google App Engine. Because GAE provisions Google-managed SSL certificates automatically (signed by Google Trust Services or Let’s Encrypt), you only need to generate a CSR if you plan to upload your own certificate, for example an OV, EV, or wildcard certificate from a […]

How to Generate a CSR in WHM

This guide shows you how to generate a CSR in WHM (Web Host Manager), the server-level control panel that sits above the individual cPanel accounts. WHM creates the CSR, the matching private key, and a self-signed certificate in one step, then stores all three in the SSL Storage Manager for retrieval. The same form works […]

How to Generate a CSR on Webmin

This tutorial shows you how to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on Webmin. Webmin is a browser-based control panel for Linux servers, so you have two practical ways to create the CSR: through Webmin’s built-in SSL modules (a graphical form for the Webmin panel itself or for an Apache virtual host) or with the […]