Sectigo Extends Support of ACME Protocol, Filling Market Need to Automate Certificate Lifecycles on Apache HTTP Directly Without Additional Software

ROSELAND, NJ — January 18, 2022 — Sectigo®, a global leader in digital certificates and automated Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM), today announced an integration for users of the open-source web server software Apache® HTTP Server. Sectigo developers have worked with the Apache community to augment this advanced automation capability in its market-leading certificate management solution, Sectigo Certificate Manager (SCM).

Sectigo has added the support for External Account Binding in the popular Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol for the Apache HTTP Server and released it to the community for wide-scale adoption. This means Apache’s built-in ACME can now be used to automatically deploy certificates issued by Sectigo to Apache HTTP web servers both inside and outside the enterprise firewall. Enterprises can report and manage all certificates on their Apache HTTP server within SCM.

To date, enterprises could not use their CLM systems to issue credentials and automate the installation of certificates to their Apache HTTP servers with native ACME support. CLM vendors offered solutions to help automate the certificate installation process with third-party software but these are fraught with administration headaches, and all must be installed and maintained by the end-user. Sectigo’s new approach means Apache HTTP users no longer need to install separate software because the External Account Binding in the ACME protocol is implemented directly into Apache HTTP Server.

“Sectigo is pleased to be part of the Apache HTTP community to deliver an enterprise-grade approach to Certificate Lifecycle Management to Apache HTTP users. Our latest integration allows businesses to eliminate the complexities and risks of managing wildcard and multi-domain certificates and keys without additional costs,” said Jason Soroko, Chief Technology Officer of PKI, Sectigo.

Soroko continued: “In this digital-first world, certificates establish digital trust for businesses to run every minute of the day. If every single certificate – sometimes hundreds of thousands – at an organization is not properly managed from discovery to issuance to renewal, businesses will stop running, outages will occur, and bad actors can cause real harm. Automation is key today, and the future of certificate automation is with ACME. We are proud to extend support of External Account Binding in ACME to the Apache user base.”

The new support for External Account Binding in ACME with Apache HTTP is enabled for the issuance of both public and private certificates so the same automation tools are used across the entire enterprise network. Sectigo is also approaching web servers and load balancers worldwide to implement this integration into all devices.

SCM is a leading, CA-agnostic, cloud-based CLM platform purpose-built to issue and manage the lifecycles of digital certificates to secure every human and machine identity across the enterprise. With the added capability of managing certificates from third-party CAs, customers can leverage their investments with other CAs and manage the lifecycles through a central portal. SCM offers integrations with leading technology providers and advanced automation capabilities to fit in every IT environment. 
 
Learn more about the integration in this datasheet.
 
About Sectigo
Sectigo is a leading provider of digital certificates and automated Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions – trusted by the world’s largest brands. Its cloud-based universal CLM platform issues and manages the lifecycles of digital certificates issued by Sectigo and other Certificate Authorities (CAs) to secure every human and machine identity across the enterprise. With over 20 years of experience establishing digital trust, Sectigo is one of the longest-standing and largest CAs with more than 700,000 customers, including 36% of the Fortune 1000. For more information, visit www.sectigo.com.