A new organization supported by Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others is working to set up a new certificate authority (CA) that will provide website owners with free SSL/TLS certificates.

The new CA will be called Let’s Encrypt and is expected to become operational in the second quarter of next year. It will be run by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), a new California public-benefit corporation.

The goal of this effort is to get as many people as possible to use the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol—the more secure successor of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)—said Josh Aas, executive director of ISRG. Aas is also a senior technology strategist at Mozilla.

The new CA will not only provide certificates for free, but will also automate the certificate issuance, configuration and renewal processes in order to encourage widespread TLS adoption.

The goal is to make getting a certificate as easy as possible, because that’s currently the hardest part of turning on TLS, Aas said. With the new CA “there will be no billing interaction, no need to create an account. You don’t really need to know much at all except that you want to turn on TLS.”

 

 

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EFF, Mozilla back new certificate authority that will offer free SSL certificates | PCWorld.