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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 Install an SSL certificate on Alteon

This guide shows you how to install an SSL certificate on Radware Alteon, using both the Web Based Management (WBM) console and the command-line interface (CLI). On Alteon, installation has two parts: first you import the private key, server certificate, and intermediate CA into the certificate repository, then you bind them to an SSL policy […]

How to Install an SSL Certificate on FileZilla Server

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install an SSL certificate on FileZilla Server to enable FTP over TLS (FTPS), so logins and file transfers are encrypted. The steps cover the modern FileZilla Server 1.x administration interface, with notes for the legacy 0.9.x version.

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Titan SFTP Server

This guide gives you step-by-step instructions on how to install an SSL certificate on Titan SFTP Server, the South River Technologies file transfer server sold for years as Titan FTP Server. It covers both administration consoles, explains how Titan handles intermediate certificates, and shows how to renew later without repeating the whole import.

How to Install an SSL certificate on CompleteFTP

This guide shows you how to install an SSL/TLS certificate on CompleteFTP, the Windows-based file-transfer server from Enterprise Distributed Technologies (EDT). The same certificate is used for FTPS (FTP over TLS) and for the HTTPS web file manager, so one import covers both. The steps below match current CompleteFTP releases and use the recommended PFX/PKCS#12 […]

How to Install an SSL Certificate on SurgeMail

This tutorial shows you how to install an SSL certificate on SurgeMail, the Netwin mail server that handles SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and webmail in one daemon. You will paste the issued certificate and its intermediate chain into the SurgeMail web admin, restart the service, and verify that every secure port (submission, SMTPS, IMAPS, POP3S, and […]

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Qmail

This tutorial shows you how to install an SSL/TLS certificate on Qmail, the mail transfer agent originally written by D. J. Bernstein. The process is the same one Qmail has used for years: build a single PEM file that contains the private key, your server certificate, and the intermediate chain, drop it at /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem, and […]

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Courier IMAP Server

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install an SSL certificate on a Courier IMAP server. You combine your certificate, private key, and CA chain into a single PEM file, point Courier’s TLS_CERTFILE setting at it, and restart the service so IMAPS and POP3S serve the new certificate.