Free SSL certificate service starts September 14

Let’s Encrypt, a service for free SSL certificates, starts its offer on September 14. The service will issue its first certificate at the end of July. The service wants to speed up the switch to encrypted connections for site administrators with the free offer.

Civil rights movement EFF, one of the driving forces behind Let’s Encrypt, calls the certificate authority launch a “milestone for web security and privacy.” The service is part of the EFF’s Encrypt the Web initiative to make any site accessible via https.

The organization notes that the implementation of SSL certificates is still too time-consuming and cumbersome for many site administrators. Last year, the EFF, together with Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and researchers from the University of Michigan, drew up a plan for its own certificate authority. The authority will come under the newly formed Internet Security Research Group.

Let’s Encrypt not only makes requesting a certificate based on the ACME protocol free, but also provides a client for quick and easy installation. With that tool for web servers, certificates can also be revoked. “For people who don’t run their own web server, we expect many hosting providers to adopt the Let’s Encrypt API so that they can offer https to their customers by default at no cost,” the EFF said.