EFF: Let’s Encrypt

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is helping to launch a new non-profit organization that will offer free server certificates beginning in summer 2015. “Let’s Encrypt is a new free certificate authority, which will begin issuing server certificates in 2015. Server certificates are the anchor for any website that wants to offer HTTPS and encrypted traffic, proving that the server you are talking to is the server you intended to talk to. But these certificates have historically been expensive, as well as tricky to install and bothersome to update. The Let’s Encrypt authority will offer server certificates at zero cost, supported by sophisticated new security protocols. The certificates will have automatic enrollment and renewal, and there will be publicly available records of all certificate issuance and revocation.” Let’s Encrypt will be overseen by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), a California public benefit corporation.