SSL Certificate Validity Will Be Limited to 

One Year Starting 1 Sep 2020

Starting 1 Sep 2020. Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers will no longer trust SSL/TLS leaf certificates with validity of more than 398 days. (This is the equivalent of a one-year certificate plus the renewal grace period.) Other types of SSL/TLS certs, including intermediates and roots, are unaffected. Apple made its announcement here and this was followed by Google and Mozilla. 

What Does This Mean After 1 September 2020?

Certificate authorities will only be offering SSL certificates with one year validity after this date. SSL certificates with two years validity are still available now till 31 Aug 2020. SSL certificates which are issued after this date must have a lifespan that is less than 398 days or the certificate will issue an error and connections will be dropped by Apple, Google, and Mozilla browsers,

Website owners can only purchase and renew SSL certificates yearly instead of two years after this date. Should website owners wish to operate their websites with two years validity SSL certificates, they should purchase or renew them before 31 Aug 2020. Essentially, any SSL/TLS certificates issued prior to 1 Sep 2020 are not affected by this change. They will remain valid (barring any unrelated certificate revocations) for the entire two-year period and would not need to be modified or replaced. However, any certificates that are issued on or after 1 Sep 2020 will need to be renewed every year to remain trusted by Safari, Google and Mozilla browsers. 

End-users will have a safer browsing experience as SSL certificates are updated more frequently, which result in fewer SSL certificates been abused for malware, phishing, or other operations. They may however see more HTTPS errors on their browsers when they visit good websites, should the owners of these websites failed to renew their SSL certificates on time.  

If you need more information about how these changes will affect you, you can reach out to us and we will be glad to help you.