The Internet Society believes that encryption should be the norm for all Internet traffic. There are several efforts underway to enhance trust in the confidentiality of communication, including Let’s Encrypt, which attempts to bring down the price of configuring secure and authenticated web servers to increase overall deployment. Today, 3 December 2015, Let’s Encrypt enters Public Beta.
That means that you no longer need an invitation to get free certificates from Let’s Encrypt. From their announcement today:
“It’s time for the Web to take a big step forward in terms of security and privacy. We want to see HTTPS become the default. Let’s Encrypt was built to enable that by making it as easy as possible to get and manage certificates.”
We have more work to do before we’re comfortable dropping the beta label entirely, particularly on the client experience. Automation is a cornerstone of our strategy, and we need to make sure that the client works smoothly and reliably on a wide range of platforms. We’ll be monitoring feedback from users closely, and making improvements as quickly as possible.”
We encourage you to check out Let’s Encrypt and encrypt your own web servers. As we said in our previous post about the initiative, we are excited about the possibilities initiatives like Let’s Encrypt can bring, specifically for those that need to configure secure web services at scale.
We hope that we see even more innovative projects like this, and even more security on the Internet!