SSL Certificate Renewal and Maintenance Guide
Every website owner should know even basic knowledge about SSL Certificate renewal and maintenance. Knowing how to maintain and renew an SSL Certificate is quite helpful because it enables website owners to manage their own SSL Certificate, which is very significant in the protection of their website and their customers.
SSL Certificate Maintenance
Here are some guidelines that you can follow so that you can manage and renew your SSL Certificates. Make sure that you learn the basics so that you will be able to do the maintenance yourself, which will enable you to save a lot of money in the long run.
- Know Your Certificates
Before you begin to understand how to maintain your SSL Certificates, you should know the kinds of SSL Certificates that you have. You should know their functions and the components that comprise the certificates.
- Kinds of Certificates
There are various kinds of SSL Certificates: Standard Certificates, Wildcard Certificates, Extended Validation Certificates and Unified Communications Certificates. You need to know which one you have, if you were not the one who purchased and installed them, so that you will know the proper maintenance of your certificates.
- Components
When installing an SSL Certificate, you should make sure that you take note of these things: root certificate, intermediate certificate, CA bundle, private key and public key. These are important things that you need to store in a safe place in your computer.
- Formats
SSL Certificates are often in PEM or DER format. Make sure that you know which one you need so that you will be able to install and maintain your certificates properly.
- Know How to Maintain Your Certificate
Here are some tips on how to maintain your SSL Certificates properly.
- Tools
You need to know the tools that you need to have to maintain your certificates. Mostly, OpenSSL is what you need. Make sure that you learn all you can about it.
- Troubleshoot
You also need to know how to troubleshoot certificates so that you don’t have to hire professionals to do the job for you. You will mostly need the OpenSSL tool for this.
Whenever something is not working properly, you should check if the certificates and keys are correctly formatted. You can use the commands below to check for the keys and certificate files on your OpenSSL:
Private Key:
C:\cert>openssl rsa -in justPrivateKey.key –check
Certificate Verification:
C:\cert>openssl x509 -in CACert.crt -text –noout
When it comes to your CSR, make sure that the information such as the organization name should be the same with the one in your registration. Any changes will result in error and rejection of the certificates.
- Renewal of SSL Certificates
You should know the validity of your certificates so that you will be able to renew them ahead of time. This will save you a lot of headache. Make sure that you read and remember your certificate authority’s instructions on how to properly renew your certificates.
Knowing a simple SSL Certificate renewal and maintenance guide is really important because this will save you from a lot of trouble. It will also enable you to save tons of money.
SSL Certificate Renewal and Maintenance Guide for SSL Certs
