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HTTPS Certificate Lifecycle: Issue, Renew & Revoke

Medium

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Certificate lifecycle: from request to renewal

An HTTPS certificate proves that a server is who it claims to be. Certificates are issued by Certificate Authorities (CAs), have a finite validity period, and can be revoked before expiry if compromised.

Let's Encrypt revolutionized this by making DV certificates free and fully automated via the ACME protocol. Understanding the full lifecycle — issuance, installation, OCSP revocation, and renewal — explains why certificate management is still a source of outages even with automation.

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