It’s always been a good idea using HTTPS for forms, sending personal data through the web. For many smaller websites and blogs this was often to expensive and to complex to set up. Let’s Encrypt intends to change that.
Let’s Encrypt is a new CA (Certification Authority) issuing domain validated certificates for free with an automated and fast creation process behind it.
There are some differences worth mentioning between Let’s Encrypt and other CAs.
- Domain validated certificates for free
- A server-side CLI tool manages the creation and validation of certificates as well as the renewal without human interaction.
- The time to live for the certificates is always 90 Days. Due to the automated renewal that is not an issue. On the contrary, because of the this stolen certificates are only good for up to 90 days until they expire.
The public beta stage is starting on December 3rd 2015. From this point on everyone may download the client and create new SSL certificates for their domains. I’m pretty sure other CAs will soon provide the same functionality for their domain validated certificates. As soon as web hosting companies incorporate the Let’s Encrypt client into their systems, this should start increase the number of HTTPS enabled websites in the near future.
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