The lifetime of TLS certificates is about to reduce significantly. With the first deadline only 6 months away, now is the time to understand the changes and consider automating certificate renewal.

What are TLS/SSL certificates

You may be more familiar with the name SSL certificates. They are the keys that secure your websites and keep your video calls private, for example. TLS certificates are another name for the same thing.

TLS certificates are difficult to renew and then require rotation on the systems that they protect. That creates yet another task for you and your IT Team to manage. A single expired certificate can take down customer-facing websites, disrupt remote access or break critical mail server gateways.

Because of those risks you may already be considering certificate renewal automation. But there are changes ahead that will make it the only practical option.

What’s Changing for Certificate Renewals and When?

This year, CA/Browser Forum members – the industry body of Certificate Authorities and Browser vendors – voted to shorten the maximum lifetime of TLS certificates. Here is the timetable:

• March 15, 2026 – new certificate lifetimes will be reduced to 200 days
• March 15, 2027 – lifetime drops further to 100 days
• March 15, 2029 – final reduction to 47 days

While this change strengthens security by reducing the window of exposure for compromised certificates, it also creates more work and risk for IT by requiring more frequent certificate renewals.

Annual certificate renewals are manageable for most teams. However, automation will be required to make 100 or 47 day renewal cycles practical.

Alongside automation, you will need to consider monitoring across your infrastructure to catch problems early.

Time for a Check-up

• 200 day certificate lifetimes are only 6 months away.
• Find out where you are currently using certificates and prioritise your business critical systems. Begin testing automation now.

Blueloop are here to help with advice and technical expertise to implement automation for your certificate renewals.

Contact the team today.