DigiCert, a leading provider of digital security solutions, offers a comprehensive suite of tools to safeguard your online presence. But with so many options out there that offer the same service, is this the best option for you? This guide provides an in-depth look at DigiCert’s offerings, helping you understand its capabilities and benefits.
What is DigiCert?
DigiCert, Inc. is a digital security company headquartered in Lehi, Utah, United States. As a certificate authority and trusted third party, DigiCert provides the public key infrastructure (PKI) and validation required for issuing digital certificates or TLS/SSL certificates. These certificates are used to secure online communications and transactions and to establish trust between websites and users. DigiCert is one of the largest certificate authorities in the world, and its certificates are used by millions of websites worldwide.
Here are some of the key services that DigiCert provides:
- SSL/TLS certificates: These certificates encrypt communications between websites and users, preventing eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Code signing certificates: These certificates are used to sign software code, ensuring that the code has not been tampered with and is from a trusted source.
- PKI solutions: DigiCert offers a variety of PKI solutions, such as managed PKI and PKIaaS, that help organizations manage their digital certificates and implement PKI across their networks.
- Web application firewalls (WAFs): DigiCert’s WAFs protect websites from web application attacks, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
How DigiCert Works
DigiCert is putting forth four suggestions to improve and modernize the CA/B Forum requirements for EV SSL certificates. These improvements will strengthen EV SSL and address some security experts’ identified “weaknesses.” Let’s examine each one and discover how it might enhance everyone’s online identity:
#1. Use CAA Records to enforce the validation level.
Website administrators can limit which CAs can issue certificates for their domain by creating a CAA record in the DNS. Ensuring an organization’s certificates are centrally managed and authorized is an excellent way to combat shadow IT certificates.
However, currently, CAA data can only list certificate authorities. To give domain administrators more control or limit the level of validation that certificates can be issued for their domain, DigiCert is proposing to expand CAA records. A website administrator may, for instance, mandate that only EV SSL certificates from a specific CA be issued for their domain.
Why This Is Advantageous
Let’s examine a speculative situation. Assume that example.com decides to refresh its blog with a brand-new style for 2020 and employs a freelance web designer. Let us assume, however, that the website designer installs a WordPress file editor plugin to finish the domain control validation process and obtain the SSL certificate. When the certificate expires, what happens?
The web designer would not have been able to obtain that certificate if example.com had implemented a CAA record restricting the domain to EV certificates from DigiCert CA alone. Any attempt to get a certificate type not specified in the CAA record would fail.
#2. Make EV Validation Data Sources Standard
Each certificate authority determines which data sources to use for validating the organization details in EV SSL certificates based on the current EV criteria. (Remember that the organizations being validated span hundreds of countries. Thus, there may be significant differences in the caliber of data sources utilized across nations.) DigiCert suggests that the CA/B forum specify a uniform list of approved data sources for the EV validation procedure.
Why This Is Advantageous
Standardized data sources have the following advantages:
Enhance EV validation’s speed and consistency, seal any holes that malicious actors might exploit, and utilize this as a foundation to address naming collisions—one of the critiques leveled at EVs, in my opinion—for de minimis reasons.
#3. During EV Validation, Incorporate Trademark Verification
Trademarks are a natural add-on since the primary goal of EV SSL certificates is to demonstrate to clients the confirmed identity of the businesses they are doing business with. According to Dean Coclin of DigiCert:
Trademarks are recognizable, distinct, and verifiable. Because users are familiar with them, browsers can incorporate the trademark into their user interface, knowing it has been verified. If they don’t, that’s okay, but any dependent party can review it in the certificate.
Why This Is Advantageous
Another tool that helps customers confirm they’re dealing with the business they believe they are in is a trademark. For instance, the SC Johnson corporation owns the trademark Windex. However, it’s unlikely that many customers know that SC Johnson is the valid owner of the Windex brand. According to the most recent EV standards, it can only mention SC Johnson.
#4. Add LEI Information to SSL Certificates
If this seems familiar to you, it may be because we discussed this concept back in October 2019. TL;DR:
One hundred fifty different nations recognize these numerical codes. The Swiss non-profit organization GLEIF is in charge of the entire system. A LEI can aid in avoiding crashes and misunderstandings. I can already hear the criticisms starting to filter through that people won’t know what to do with an LEI number because of the same confusion around organizational names.
However, there are a few ways to get around that. One option is for the browser to produce the related data using the LEI code. Although it could necessitate making an extra call, which some browsers may find objectionable, it is still possible. Although the user would have to do anything to use this, some people could find it helpful. Above all, however, the lack of an LEI on an eCommerce website or any other business that deals with essential data could raise warning flags.
Why This Is Advantageous
Two main advantages come from adding LEIs to EV SSL certificates:
- adds more details about the company
- And gives customers a direct way to look up and confirm information about it for various purposes.
DigiCert Review 2024 and Beyond
The impact of artificial intelligence on the adaptability and velocity of assaults and identity and provenance will cause seismic transformations in cybersecurity by 2024. This is also happening while businesses switch to quantum-safe algorithms for their cryptography. Due to the convergence of these two trends, deeper investments in trust are essential to safeguard interactions with gadgets, software, and information in our personal and professional lives.”
#1. Businesses will Begin Accelerating their Investments in Post-Quantum Computing, and Senior Executives will Become More Aware of the Field
According to a recent Ponemon Institute survey on PQC, business executives are still unaware of the current implications of quantum computing, even though most IT directors are worried about the possibility of “harvest now, decrypt later” cyberattacks. It also showed that most organizations don’t have a clear ownership, funding, or strategy for preparing for PQC. Investment in this field will increase in 2024 due to planning and education initiatives.
#2. The basis for Content Authenticity Will be Provenance and Identity
This problem will take center stage throughout the US election season. Our ability to trust the authenticity and source of content will be based on verified identities. Businesses will start looking into methods for establishing digital identities only once, eliminating the need for further verification processes each time an application is made.
#3. Software Supply Chains
Software supply chains will incorporate trust into their fundamental components by requiring transparency in the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), inspecting before you sign, and checking packages.
There will be checks throughout the software supply chain, ensuring excellent stability. As software bills of materials are used more often, embedded software construction will become more transparent.
#4. IoT Trust Will Make Real-World Use Cases
IoT trust will make real-world use cases IoT trust will make real-world use cases like EV chargers and medical equipment possible. Identity and operational verifications will be used to safeguard devices more and more to ensure authenticity. People would be able to use gadgets that facilitate daily living with the assurance that their data is safe and the gadgets are impervious to tampering.
#5. Chief Digital Trust Officers
They will become an essential executive group member who steers the company. As they link digital trust strategy and investment to targeted business objectives, chief digital trust officers will occupy a more prominent place at the executive table. This will turn into a fundamental component of client retention and business resilience.
#6. The Architecture of Zero Trust Will Spread
Digital trust will be its cornerstone. Through information technology, product security, and consumer ecosystems, “never trust, always verify” architectures will become ubiquitous, displacing networks and VPNs that formerly offered their customers implicit trust. There will be a steady increase in the usage of certificate-mediated authentication to provide identity, integrity, and encryption to data transactions and applications.
What steps are required of the customers?
Usually, clients don’t need to take any action. Browsers and mobile devices will continue to trust existing, issued, and deployed Akamai-managed OV and EV certificates from DigiCert and GeoTrust until they expire or are revoked. The cross-signed version of the previous DigiCert Global Root CA will be included in the new certificates that are issued by the new intermediate CAs and root certificates after March 8, 2023, if an affected certificate is changed (via a SAN addition or removal), renewed automatically by CPS, or renewed manually.
These recently issued certificates will be made available along with a leaf certificate, a new intermediate CA, and a cross-signed copy of the fresh root certificate. The older DigiCert Global Root CA will cross-sign the new root certificate to maintain compatibility with current browsers and devices.
When the new DigiCert G5 root certificates are rolled out more broadly, Akamai might allow CPS users to choose a different trust chain that doesn’t contain a cross-signed G5 root certificate.
#1. Testing
Customers should activate the “Always Test on Staging” option for each certificate if they want to test them using the new hierarchy. You can choose “Force early renewal” in the Akamai Control Center’s CPS UI after March 8, 2023, to get a new certificate under the Fresh Roots. The Akamai Staging network will be used to test these new certificates. You can keep pushing on Staging until seven days before the currently deployed certificate expires. Seven days before the current deployed certificate expires, CPS will automatically deploy the new certificate from staging to production.
#2. Pinned Diplomas
Akamai does not advise users to hard-code or pin any portion of the SSL/TLS keys, certificates, or trust chains in client software or applications. Pinning certificates in mobile or other applications necessitates extensive operational experience and resources to maintain certificates and handle unforeseen issues.
What is DigiCert used for?
Digital certificates help secure code, software, email, devices, web servers, and signatures, among other things.
Is DigiCert trusted?
The SSL certificates that DigiCert issues to its clients—many Fortune 500 organizations, financial and educational institutions, governments, and businesses worldwide—are based on the highly recognized and trusted DigiCert Root Certificates.
What kind of company is DigiCert?
DigiCert is the leading global supplier of scalable TLS/SSL, IoT, and PKI identity and encryption solutions. The business is well-known for its cutting-edge security solutions, quick and informed client service, and enterprise-grade certificate management platform.
Why is DigiCert so expensive?
Compared to most other CAs, DigiCert provides a far more extensive warranty on their certificates. Additionally, compared to different CAs, DigiCert’s certification procedure is far quicker. As a result, DigiCert costs more than other certificates.
How do DigiCert certificates work?
If it believes the certificate, the browser uses the server’s public key to generate, encrypt, and return a symmetric session key. To begin an encrypted session, the server sends back an acknowledgment that has been encrypted with the session key after decrypting the symmetric session key with its private key.
Conclusion
DigiCert makes SSL/TLS simpler and removes the annoyance associated with PKI. It is among the world’s most dependable and trustworthy certificate authorities. DigiCert invented validation, powers the DigiCert brand, invests millions annually in its infrastructure, and is still at the vanguard of blockchain, IoT, and post-quantum cryptography. DigiCert has secured the identities of Fortune 100 companies with its top-tier SSL/TLS products that offer a full spectrum of website security features and its world-class certificate management platform, CertCentral.
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