Let’s Encrypt issued its one billionth digital certificate a few weeks ago. Run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the service provides these certificates to websites for free, allowing your browser to create a secure and validated connection to a server that’s effectively impenetrable to snooping. The pandemic hasn’t halted the group’s progress: It says it’s now issued over 1,080,000,000 certificates.
That Let’s Encrypt doesn’t charge for this service is a big deal. A digital certificate for a website—also useful for email servers and other client/server systems—used to cost hundreds of dollars a year for a basic version and even more for a more comprehensive one. For smaller sites, that cost alone was a barrier.
While the price had dropped significantly before Let’s Encrypt began issuing its certificates at no cost in 2015, and some commercial issuers had offered free certificates on a limited basis, encrypting a site was no trivial…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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