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Certificate Management

SSL/TLS certificates

  • These certificates are used to secure network communications by enabling HTTPS connections and encrypting data transmitted between users and applications.
  • You can use wildcards to match all the subdomains in a domain. E.g., *.example.com
  • The certificate is trusted by a CA

Certificate Authority (CA)

  • DigiCert
  • GlobalSign
  • Sectigo (formerly Comodo CA)
  • Entrust
  • GoDaddy (also a domain registrar)
  • Amazon Trust Services

Certificate Management Services

  • Let's Encrypt (it's also a CA)
  • AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
  • Google Cloud Certificate Manager
  • Azure App Service Certificates

  • Cloudflare SSL for SaaS

  • OpenSSL (self-managed)

  • HashiCorp Vault (self-managed)
  • Certbot (self-managed)

Let's Encrypt

  • Let's Encrypt is a Linux Foundation project
  • It provides HTTPS certificates for free, in an automated way
  • These certificates use all the standard cryptographic security, and are short-lived (about 3 months)
  • The domains are securely verified and the certificates are generated automatically. This also allows automating the renewal of these certificates.
  • The idea is to automate the acquisition and renewal of these certificates so that you can have secure HTTPS, for free, forever.