Common TLS Certificate and Handshake Errors: What They Mean and How to Fix Them
Note: Although the modern protocol is Transport Layer Security (TLS), the industry still commonly refers to TLS certificates as “SSL certificates.” TLS errors can be frustrating because browsers often reduce a complex certificate or handshake failure to a short message such as “Your connection is not private” or “SSL protocol error.” The important thing to understand is that […]
How to Monitor SSL Certificate Expiration
Terminology note: Although these are commonly called SSL certificates, modern public certificates are used with TLS. In this guide, we use “SSL certificate” where it matches common search terminology and “TLS certificate” when discussing the underlying technology. I remember the days when securing a website meant manually generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on a server. […]
SSL Certificate Validity Changes in 2026
If you’ve recently issued a new SSL/TLS certificate and noticed the expiration date is much sooner than expected, you aren’t alone. As of March 15, 2026, the industry has officially moved away from the 398-day (one-year) standard. We have entered a phased “step-down” period mandated by the CA/Browser Forum (Ballot SC-081). This represents one of […]