Certera Launches ACME Certificate-as-a-Service to Help [...]

📅 July 21, 2026 - As the SSL/TLS industry shifts toward much shorter periods of certificate validity, many companies worldwide will need to re-evaluate how they manage their digital certificates. Where once certificate management was performed once a year, it will now be performed around the clock; thus, introducing many challenges for it and security departments within organizations.

In an effort to prepare organizations to meet these changes, Certera has announced the release of the ACME Certificate-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform, a next-generation solution focused on automating the entire lifecycle of an SSL certificate, including issuing, validating, renewing, deploying, and managing the certificate. New SSL Automation platform to help streamline the process of maintaining and managing SSL certificates for organizations. Check out: https://certera.com/automated-ssl-certificates

Since certificate validity periods continue to shrink and there is an increasing demand for processes to manage automated certificates, manual processes will be phased out or eliminated.

The SSL Industry Is Entering a New Certificate Lifecycle Era
The public SSL/TLS ecosystem has changed enormously over the last several years. Browser vendors, Certificate Authorities (CAs), and the CA/Browser Forum have collaborated to move towards a more secure internet and faster cryptographic agility by reducing the length of time that certificate validity can be, with validity periods of once over one year now averaging around four to five months.

Today, public SSL certificates that are currently trusted are only good for approximately 200 days compared with the prior max validity period of 398 days. The current industry-approved roadmap indicates that certificate lifespan will continue to decrease, reaching 47-day validity by 2029.

The reduction in the length of time during which a certificate is valid will enhance security by lowering the length of time a compromised certificate can remain valid and will lower the time between when a certificate becomes available for granting and the time when a validation is no longer valid; however, these same changes make it more difficult for organizations managing a large number of certificates across multiple websites and applications, APIs, cloud-based environments, and internal infrastructure to perform basic daily operations.

More Renewals Mean More Opportunities for Failure
In past years, companies have generally renewed certificates once a year. Going forward, certificate validity requirements may call for additional renewals during the same calendar year for the same certificate.

For organizations that manage multiple sets of certificates (e.g. dozens, hundreds, or thousands), manually tracking their renewal dates via spreadsheets, ticketing systems, email reminders, and calendar alerts rapidly becomes untenable. As organizations grow their certificate inventories, so does their likelihood of missing their renewal dates and inadvertently allowing certificates to expire, which can lead to disruptions in service.

When a certificate expires, it may result in downtime on a website, application failure, customer-facing security notifications, or interruption of key business operations. As certificate validity continues to decrease, the ability to prevent such incidents requires an increased reliance on automation.

Why SSL Automation Is Becoming Essential
Organizations are adopting automated certificate lifecycle management solutions because of the transition to shorter certificate lifecycles.

According to many analysts, it is likely that manual certificate management will become more difficult due to the increasing frequency of certificate renewals, as well as the need for security teams to find solutions that automate the entire certificate lifecycle while still having visibility and control.

Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol is critical in this area.
ACME has become the industry standard for automating certificate operations, allowing organizations to manage SSL certificates without needing to do any manual work. In addition to allowing certificate issuance, validation, renewal, installation, and replacement via standardized automation workflows, ACME makes it easier for organizations to have consistent certificate management processes across different IT environments.

Sectigo ACME Certificate-as-a-Service Simplifies Certificate Management
The ACME Certificate-as-a-Service from Certera is aimed at assisting organizations in transitioning their certificate management processes into the present-day era with less overall operational complexity.
Link: https://certera.com/acme-certificates/sectigo-acme-ssl