SSL Certificate Tracking

SSL certificates provide an important layer of security for your website by proving authentication and enabling an encrypted connection between your web browser and web server. It’s important to keep your SSL certificates up-to-date and this is where Catchpoint can help. In this week’s Tip Tuesday, we look at Catchpoint’s SSL certificate tracking service, which alerts you before your certificates are due to expire or if there are any problems. This means you don’t have to worry about untimely expirations (accidental expiry is more common than you may realize, as proved by Microsoft earlier this month), your customers experiencing an outage, or worse, theft of their confidential information.

The Benefits of SSL Certificate Tracking

SSL, which stands for Secure Socket Layer, is used to add a layer of security to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the main language of the web, especially important in an era when data protection issues are frequently in the headlines. SSL certificates are sometimes described simply as digital certificates and serve three key functions:

1. to authenticate a website’s identity so that your clients know they are doing business with your company;
2. to encrypt the data that is transmitted from the web browser to web server and maintain its confidentiality;
3. to validate the integrity of the data being sent to and from your client.

Any organization that uses their website to receive, process, or store confidential information should have an SSL certificate.

There are several benefits to SSL certificate tracking through Catchpoint:

• be alerted ahead of time to your certificate expiring, so you can renew in a timely manner;
• set timed alerts, including the option to include a ‘critical’ alert;
• be made immediately aware of any incidents that compromise the safety of the SSL connection.

Watch a Video Demo to see how to Track your SSL Certificates with Catchpoint

We’ve recorded a brief demo to show you how the Catchpoint SSL monitor can help you track your SSL certificates to ensure they stay valid. We’ll run through the different error types you might encounter (all of which you can monitor with Catchpoint), focusing on the two most common. Watch our short demo to see how to run an instant SSL test on your domain and set up advanced alerts.

This video shows how Catchpoint can help you:

• Track your SSL certificates
• Run an instant SSL test on your domain
• Quickly find out your contract expiry dates and other key metrics
• Configure timed alerts to trigger ahead of the expiry date
• Identify and fix other SSL error types