Certera Alerts Website Webmasters: SSL/TLS Certificate Lifespans Head Toward 47 Days

Certera is urging Indian businesses to get ready for a major operational change in website and API security. The CA/Browser Forum has approved a phased plan to reduce how long publicly trusted SSL/TLS certificates can stay valid, with the maximum lifespan dropping to 47 days by 2029.

The shift won't happen overnight. The current timeline moves in steps: a 199-day maximum beginning in March 2026, then 100 days in March 2027, before reaching 47 days in March 2029. Alongside shorter lifespans, the window to reuse domain and identity validation evidence will shrink significantly. In practical terms, teams will need to revalidate more frequently, not just renew.

For many Indian SMBs, the biggest risk is disruption. An expired certificate doesn't simply look unprofessional; it can block checkout pages, break customer logins, stop webhooks, and cause API failures that partners and mobile apps treat as hard errors. Businesses that still rely on manual renewals or "one IT person who remembers" face a higher chance of outages as renewal cycles tighten.

Certera's guidance is to treat certificates like ongoing infrastructure. Start by listing every hostname and system that terminates HTTPS, web servers, load balancers, and API gateways. Next, move to automated issuance and renewal (through ACME-based workflows), and add monitoring that warns early and verifies the new certificate is actually live after deployment.

Shorter certificate lifespans can improve security, but only when renewals happen reliably. If you want to stay ahead of the 47-day future, buy an SSL certificate today to prevent multiple renewals and set up auto-renewals early. Certera can help you get started with the right certificate for your domain.

Certera is a new-age certificate authority and trusted SSL provider in India and USA, offering a wide range of digital certificates from trusted CAs and 24/7 technical support.