New Time Limits on SSL Certificates

New changes coming to SSL Certificates also known as, the “little green or white lock” or the lock in your address bar. Apple announced the changes officially on August 17 2020 but Google and Mozilla are also following suit.

Some browsers look different but most look like the following.

Trust SSL Announcement

Apple announced that it will not trust SSL Certificates that are older than 1 year. (Technically older than 398 days which is longer than 1 year.)

TLS server certificates issued on or after September 1, 2020 must not have a validity period greater than 398 days. You can read the offical annoucment here.

We recommend that certificates be issued with a maximum validity of 397 days but most issuers will probably sell you one for less.

One of our favorite places to buy an SSL certificate is Namecheap and they are already following suit with the ability to only buy one year compared to buying three years which was available yesterday. Check out NameCheap’s SS

SSL Certificates – What To Do

Every site should have a SSL Certificate which helps rankings and encrypts any info passed between your site and the user. If you need help installing one please contact us.

Next steps would be to check when your SSL certificate expires, and to see how long you have had one. We highly recommend Let’s Encrypt for most websites which renews every 90 days which surpasses this requirement.

If you need a different SSL Certificate such as an EV, DV or OV I would consider updating yours in the next few months to make sure this requirement is met.

In the future it would be great if big announcements such as this one would allow business to pivot and adjust with more that 30 days notice but there is not much we can do.

Have a question about your SSL Certificate or this article? Let us know.